


Universally Acknowledged

by Realmer06



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 5+1 Things, Community: smrw_ficafest, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Pride and Prejudice References, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-24 17:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22321456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Realmer06/pseuds/Realmer06
Summary: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Malfoy who insists on being perpetually mysterious must be prepared to deal with an insatiably curious Weasley. Rose/Scorpius with a healthy measure of Pride and Prejudice thrown in.
Relationships: Scorpius Malfoy/Rose Weasley
Comments: 18
Kudos: 114





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not dead! My writing energy for the past year has been focused on my original novel, which I am still plugging away at. But I was reminded about this story the other day, and it's one of the ones I never transferred over to Ao3, so I decided to do some minor tweaks and post it here for your enjoyment!
> 
> Originally written for the 2012 SMRW_ficafest on LiveJournal, where it was voted one of the top entries of the year. Thanks as always to Maggie for the beta, lo so many years ago.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> My prompt was:
> 
> "May I ask to what these questions tend?"  
> "Merely to the illustration of your character," said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. "I am trying to make it out."  
> "And what is your success?"  
> She shook her head. "I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly."   
> \- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

_Universally Acknowledged_ or

Five Times Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy Crossed Paths (and one time their paths converged)

I.

The field of Magical Anthropology was relatively new when Rose Weasley got to it. As a child, her Muggle grandparents had taken her to museum after museum, and whether she was fighting crowds to glimpse the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum or standing on tiptoe to peek high enough over the glass-covered counter to see William Shakespeare's First Folio, she came to love the feeling of being surrounded by the sheer _weight_ of history.

Rose had loved those trips with her grandparents more than anything, and she had been dismayed to discover that the Wizarding world had no equivalent, no central place open to the public to hold all their history. To her eight-year-old mind, it had seemed like a tremendous oversight, and by the time she'd finished at Hogwarts, she'd decided to do something about it. So she'd done some research and discovered a little-known division of the Ministry that had formed out of the end of the Last Great War, dedicated to recovering and uncovering magical heritage all over the world. The brand new department was responsible for research expeditions to all parts of the earth. Rose had signed on in an instant.

And four years later, at the age of twenty-two, she gleefully received a crate of scrolls that had been uncovered at a dig near Stonehenge, and her excitement was like nothing so much as a child on Christmas morning.

"Grabby much?" her co-worker and good friend Shanti asked with a laugh as she handed over the box.

"This is _us_ , Shanti," Rose said, her excitement barely contained. "This isn't Aztec relics from North American or evidence of shamans in tribal Africa, this is us, our roots, right here in England, older than the Founding, older than anything we've ever seen, and it's _British_!"

"Well, Celtic, most likely," Rose's supervisor Anabel said as she passed through the lab. "How's your Runic translation?"

"Top of my class," Rose assured her. "Can I please break the seals?"

"Make sure you perform all the –"

"– proper disarming and evaluation charms for presence of malicious intent, yes, yes. I will follow all protocol to the letter, as always."

"Go on, then," Anabel said with a laugh, and Rose skipped off to a private workstation. Grinning with anticipation, she broke the seal on the first scroll and began to read.

Almost an hour and a half later, Anabel and Shanti realized that Rose had been sitting without moving for the better part of all that time, frozen as she stared at the first scroll she had opened. Nothing that they said or did had any effect to pull her out of the trance – she was lost to them.

Rose was aware of nothing but the strange Runes in an ancient hand. She couldn't look away, couldn't move, couldn't do anything but sit and stare and read.

After an endless length of time which seemed like no time at all, Rose slowly became aware of speech, but as if through a long tunnel, the way conversation sounds to the almost-asleep. Slowly, so slowly, she became aware of the words themselves.

" . . . Miss Weasley, if you are able to hear and understand me, I want you to try and let me know. Now if you can't, that's all right, no need to panic. I know you may not be in control of your body, but let's try something." The voice was male and soothing and reassuring, and it calmed her panic before it had a chance to do more than form halfway. She didn't know who was speaking, but she trusted him.

"Miss Weasley, if you can hear and understand me, I'd like you to try and look up from that paper." Rose tried, she did, but she couldn't, and as she felt the grip tighten around her, the panic swelled up again, but before it could overwhelm her, the voice was back. "No need to worry if you can't," it said, as if anticipating the panic. "I'd actually have been rather astounded if that had worked. i have plenty more tricks up my sleeve, don't you worry."

Another voice spoke, asking a question, but Rose couldn't detach enough from the scroll to understand what was being said. She only heard her voice's response.

"I don't, no, but either she can't hear me at all, or she can and she just can't respond. If it's the first, I lose nothing by being reassuring. If it's the second, though, being reassuring will hopefully keep her from panicking, which I'd like because I don't know how whatever spell this is might respond to her panic. Now, excuse me, please, but I do need to give her my full attention. Now, Miss Weasley," he said, he voice becoming more distinct as he presumably turned back to her, "I don't want you to think me forward, but calling you by a more familiar name will likely yield better results, so I'm going to start calling you Rose. I hope that's all right, but if not, you can tell me off just as soon as we get you free. So, Rose, here's what I'd like us to try next. If you can move your head at all, please do so. A shake, a nod, a blink, anything."

Rose tried, she really did, but nothing happened. However, again, just when she was on the verge of panic, the man's voice came back in. "That's all right, don't worry. We'll focus down a little more, and we'll get there, Rose. It's okay. How about an arm? Any part of an arm, a shoulder, an elbow? Can you move anything like that?" She could not. "Again, not a problem, and an arm wouldn't have been my first choice, anyway, so let's try your hand. Even just a finger."

Rose concentrated as hard as she could and managed to twitch one finger, just a little bit. She was immediately elated, but then worried that he hadn't seen it.

"Okay, Rose, I saw a little bit of movement from your left pointer finger. Now, if that was you, consciously moving it, I'd like you to do it again." She concentrated with all her might, and this time, the movement came easier, and she was able to actually lift and tap her finger. "Brilliant," the young man said, and he sounded like he meant it. "But one more time, just to be sure, if you are in control of that finger, and are using it to communicate with me, please tap it twice." She did, though it took a ridiculous amount of effort to do so. "Excellent, Rose, really excellent," he said then, and she felt a surge of relief. "Okay, now that we can communicate, I have some simple questions to ask that will help me know how to proceed. The first, and most important – this spell that's holding you, does it feel malicious in any way? Do you feel threatened by it? Tap once for yes, and twice for no."

Rose considered the question, probing carefully at the lock around her mind, then tapped her finger twice. "Okay, Rose, I saw two taps. So you are telling me that you do not feel threatened by the spell that holds you, is that correct?"

One tap.

"Well, _that_ is marvelously good news," he said, and Rose thought she could hear a smile in his voice. "That makes our next step much easier. Rose, I think if we can show the spell that you're not interested in stealing the secrets of the scroll, we'll be able to get it to let you go."

 _And how exactly are we going to do that?_ Rose wanted to ask, but that was a bit difficult to communicate through finger taps. Luckily the mystery man with the soothing voice launched into an explanation almost immediately.

"I'm going to ask you a series of questions. They'll start out simple, and they'll get more and more complicated and specific. I want you to have to really think about the answers and how to communicate them. The more you're focusing on the answers to my questions, the less you're focusing on the scroll. If we can detach your focus from the scroll, piece by piece, we can also pull it away from you, like . . . peeling away a sticker, there's a good Muggle metaphor. And if we're careful, we'll be able to do it without leaving any of that annoying residue behind. So, tap once if you understand, twice if you don't, and . . . oh, three times if you understood a while ago and have just been waiting for me to shut up."

If Rose could have smiled, she would have. She tapped three times, and the man chuckled. "Yeah, sorry," he said. "I have a tendency to go on a bit." Rose tapped once then, and won a full out laugh. "All right, then, Miss Snarky, let's get started. Is your full name Rose Eleanor Weasley? Tap once for yes, twice for no."

One tap.

"Are your parents Ron Weasley and Angelina Johnson-Weasley?"

Two taps.

"Are you the fifth eldest Weasley grandchild?"

Here Rose hesitated slightly, counting, then slowly tapped twice.

"Please tap your finger once for each of your male cousins."

 _James_. Tap. _Al_. Tap. _Fred_. Tap. _Louis_. Tap. _Hu– no, Rose. Not Hugo._ She curled away the finger she had prematurely lifted to tap.

"Almost count your brother as a cousin there, Rose?" She _knew_ she heard a smirk in the voice this time. Mentally making a face she usually reserved for her cousin James, Rose tapped her finger three times. The man laughed. "I don't know what three taps means in this instance, but I think I can guess." Rose flicked her fingers at him then for further emphasis. "All right, all right," he said, still laughing. "Moving on. In what month were you born?"

She hesitated, not sure how best to communicate the information. He jumped right on her hesitation. "Come on, Rose," he said. "It's not a difficult question, even if you are limited to finger taps. I'm not telling you what to do anymore. Figure it out."

 _All right then!_ she thought, exasperated, and carefully began counting as she tapped slowly. _One, two, three, four, five, six . . . seven, or no, was that eight?_ She froze, her finger stalled in the air, mid-tap. She felt a stirring of something in the back of her mind, and she couldn't remember what month she was on, and she could feel the something in her mind starting to frown at her, and reach for her, and she was becoming less aware of the question she was answering, and more aware of those symbols on the parchment —

"Rose?" His voice cut through the fog. "You've stopped at seven. Unless you were born in July, you need to keep going. Pick up where you left off."

More determined than ever, she wrenched her mind away from the parchment. _November_ , she though firmly. _I was born in November. It was cold, and it was rainy, and Dad was in such a hurry to get inside that he slipped on the walk and fell and broke his wrist. And Aunt Ginny still teases him about trying to steal focus away from his daughter._ And feeling further away from the ancient scroll than she had since she started reading it, she lifted her finger and tapped four more times.

"There you go. Now, what day?"

That was too much. "I am _not_ tapping my finger 26 times!" she said fiercely, and then realized she'd spoken aloud.

"Well, then, as a reward for finding your voice, you don't have to," the man said, and the smile was clear in his voice this time. "Can you move at all, Rose? Can you lower the parchment and look away?"

"I –" She tried, she really did. "No," she said, and her voice wavered infuriatingly as panic reared up again. She had to get free! "No, I can't, I–!"

"It's all right," he said immediately, his voice soothing and calm as ever. "It's all right, Rose. We're making fantastic progress. The fact that you can speak at all, this soon, shows me that. So don't worry. I got you this far, I'm going to get you the rest of the way. I promise. But I need you to trust me."

"I do," she said in a shaky but far calmer voice.

"Good," he said. "Now, am I right in thinking you can't close your eyes?"

She tried, and couldn't. "Yes," she told him.

"I had a feeling," he said. "Let me explain what I want to do. I want to get the scroll away from you, physically. But I don't want to try and take it while you're looking at it. I don't know what would happen, and I don't want to risk it. So I'd like to physically close your eyes for you first. I'm going to use my hand to shut them. Is that all right?"

"Yes," Rose said, and then a moment later, a warm hand gently shut her eyes.

"Okay, now tell me a story."

"What?" Rose asked, confused.

"Tell me a story," he repeated. "A story from your childhood. Tell me . . . oh, I don't know, the first time you read your favorite book. In as much detail as you can."

"Okay," Rose said, still a little confused, but she thought she understood what he was going to try and do. "Um . . . when I was seven, my grandmum, on Mum's side, took me to the British Library. We'd had a girls' day in Muggle London, just the two of us, and when she told me about the huge library, well, I had to see it. And they have a room there, a gallery, just full of old original manuscripts of, oh, everything, really. Shakespeare's Quartos and DaVinci's sketches and original sheet music written by Mozart, I think. But what I really remember is Jane Austen's writing desk. They had it in a glass case, her desk with a pen and ink and everything, and her original, handwritten manuscript of _Pride and Prejudice_ open on it. I was barely tall enough to see it, but I stood on tiptoe and I read as much as I could, and there was just something about the language. I hardly understood it, and I could barely read her handwriting, but it captivated me. I went home and asked Mum if we could read the book, and even though I was only seven, she said yes. And it's still one of my favorites."

She shifted in her seat, then frowned, eyes still closed. She realized first that she was no longer frozen, and then that she was no longer holding anything. "Can I open my eyes?" she asked.

"Hmmm?" the voice said from across the room. "Oh, yes. You should be able to." She opened them to see a tall blonde man about her age who looked vaguely familiar rolling up the cursed scroll very carefully. When he caught her eye, he smiled. "Sorry about that. Didn't want to interrupt." The scroll now rolled into a tight cylinder and resealed, he handed it to a partner she hadn't even known was in the room. "Take it straight to Davison, but tell him not to break the seal, whatever he does. Oh, and I suppose you can send the other two back in. They look about ready to burst through the door."

The other man nodded, and exited, and before Rose could express her gratitude or ask the man's name, Shanti and Anabel were at her side, worrying over her and expressing their relief and concern in a rather exhausting way.

"Yes, I'm fine," she tried to tell them both. "Really."

"Is she?" Anabel asked the blonde young man.

"Oh, yes," he said with a smile and a nod. "Miss Weasley has a very resilient mind. She'll bounce right back from the encounter, though policy dictates she should go home for the rest of the day."

And before Rose could say that she was fine, that she didn't need the rest of the day off – which was a lie; she felt awful, but she didn't want to admit it – Anabel broke in, saying, "Well, if that's what she needs, then that's what will happen."

"Rose, I've never seen anything so scary in all my life," Shanti said, hugging her from the side. "You sitting there without moving like that."

"Really, I'm fine," she said softly, still trying to listen in on the mystery man's conversation with Anabel.

". . . do have a few more questions I need to ask Miss Weasley," she managed to catch him say, "and I don't want to disrupt your work any longer."

"Of course," Anabel said, and ushered Shanti out despite her adamant protests.

"I really don't need the rest of the day off," Rose said when the door had clicked shut.

"Yes, you do," the man said with kind authority. "Even if Ministry guidelines didn't demand it, you have a splitting headache and you're as exhausted as you would be if you'd stayed up all night and then run a 5k." Rose stared at him.

"How did you – ?" she asked, and he gave her a soft smile.

"Because I have some experience with this, Miss Weasley," he said kindly. "Besides, even if you don't need it, they do. If you don't go home, they'll just hover over you for the rest of the day, and I know how much you'd hate that." Rose grimaced, then sighed.

"They mean well," she said, trying to defend her friends.

"I know that they do," was his response.

"You said you had more questions for me?" she asked then, and he nodded.

"Yes. I need to know what happened before you broke the seals on the scrolls." Rose grimaced again.

"You mean you need to know if I skirted procedure," she said bluntly, and he smiled. "I assure you, I performed every precautionary enchantment we have. I performed them all twice. I don't know what was in that seal, but it wasn't anything — " He stopped her with a raised hand.

"Miss Weasley, I believe you," he said calmly. "I am well aware of your attention to detail." She frowned at that. It was the second time he'd spoken as if he knew her personally, beyond the confines of this room. And he looked so familiar. She couldn't shake the feeling that she knew him, but she couldn't place from where. "My questions," he continued, "are designed to help me better understand the nature of the spell itself and how to recognize and safeguard against it in the future. Now, are you able to recall what you read, any of it, even a little?"

His questions were incredibly detailed and specific, and she answered them as best she could. He didn't seem let down at all when she couldn't give a definite response; on the contrary, he seemed thrilled with even the little that she could tell him. And through the whole interview, that vague sense of familiarity continued to nag at her. 

"Are you a curse breaker?" she asked as he started to pack up his bag. He glanced at her.

"No," he said with a shake of his head. She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't.

"An Auror?" she tried again.

"No," he repeated with a slight smile this time.

"A Healer, then?"

"No, Miss Weasley," he said, and he sounded almost apologetic, but he didn't reveal any more information.

"Then who do you work for?" she asked, exasperated.

"The Ministry, same as you," was all he said. "Now, then, if in the next few days, you suffer any ill effects that you think are related to the incident, let your supervisor know immediately. And if you see these symbols on anything else that comes in from the dig, don't open them. Have your supervisor send us a message. She'll know how to contact us. I'm glad I could be of service to you, Miss Weasley," he said, standing and extending his hand to her.

"Miss Weasley?" she repeated, taking his hand and shaking it. "You called me Rose before."

"Rose," he said with a smile and a nod.

"And you have me at a disadvantage," she said, throwing caution to the wind because she had to know who he was. "Because you know my name, but I don't know yours."

The look he gave her then was very strange. His eyes narrowed, though they never lost their gleam of amusement. She was struck with the sudden thought that he saw the who world as one cosmic joke no one but he had been let in on. "Really," he said, interest lining his voice. "You don't know who I am." It was not quite a question.

Rose grimaced and bit her lip in embarrassment. "I knew it," she said. "I should know. Right?"

"Yeah," he said with a nod, drawing the word out. "That you should, Rose Weasley." She wracked her brain, she really did, but it wasn't there.

"I'm so sorry," she said, "really, I feel like an idiot. You look so familiar, but I just can't place you, and - I'm digging myself deeper into this hole with every word, aren't I?"

The mystery man nodded, but it was clear he was enjoying himself. Rose took a deep breath and screwed up her face. "Give me a hint," she begged.

"Well, we went to school together for seven years," he said then. "We weren't in the same house, but we were in the same year, and we shared three N.E.W.T. classes, and those aren't exactly large."

It hit her all of a sudden, and now she really did feel like an idiot.

"Scorpius Malfoy," she said with a groan.

"There we are," he said with a grin.

"Oh, I'm absolutely mortified," she said, burying her face in her hands, but his amusement at it all enabled her to laugh through the embarrassment, too. "Can you ever forgive me?" she asked, and he laughed.

"Don't mention it," he said, all needling gone. "It has been four years since we left school, and it's not like we ever interacted."

"Still," she insisted. "You'd think I'd have the courtesy to remember the first boy my father ever warned me away from." His eyebrows shot up at that.

"No kidding," he said, and she nodded.

"Yep. Train to Hogwarts, first year."

"Didn't waste any time, did he?" he said with a grin.

"Where a Malfoy was involved? Certainly not," she said, and then they stood without speaking for a moment or two, just long enough for the situation to become awkward, which they both jumped to remedy at the same time.

"Anyway–" Rose said, just as Scorpius said, "I should probably—" and then they both laughed awkwardly, and Rose gestured for him to continue.

"I was saying I should probably get back to my office."

"And I should probably be heading home to get some rest and drink plenty of fluids, hmm?"

"Always good advice," Scorpius said, extending his hand to her again. "Until next time, Rose."

"Well, if I'm on top of my job, there shouldn't be a next time, right?" She'd meant it as a joke, but for some reason, it didn't quite come off that way. "Thank you again, Scorpius," she said, and with one last nod, he left. Rose watched him go with an incomprehensible pang of regret that she probably wouldn't cross paths with him again.


	2. Chapter 2

II.

Twenty-four-year-old Rose Weasley took a deep breath as she stepped off the transport and into the bright summer sunlight. "Smell it, Shanti," she said with enthusiasm as her companion trudged up beside her.

"It smells the same as England," Shanti said.

"No, it doesn't," Rose said, inhaling again. "It smells like freedom! Freedom and opportunity!" Shanti laughed.

"I think that transport knocked something loose," she said. "We're standing in a field in the middle of France. It's not like we're in Egypt or China or Australia or anything."

"But it's our first solo dig," Rose said, refusing to curb her enthusiasm. "We're on our own, practicing our craft, off to make discoveries heretofore undiscovered!"

"You do realize that we're working as part of a team of more than thirty and that Anabel will be Apparating in about twice a week, right? Also, it's France."

But not even Shanti's unromantic view of the situation could dim Rose's spirits. "It's the principle of the thing, Shanti. And I know you're just as excited to be here as I am, deep down."

That won a smile out of Shanti. "Maybe," she allowed, but then she grinned at Rose, and grabbed her hand, and the two girls took off at a run. Moments later, they crested a hill and stopped short at the sight that greeted them.

Spread out below them, covering half a mile at least, was a massive, dusty, marvelous excavation site, a team of archaeologists already hard at work. Rose stood, drinking it all in, but Shanti gave her hand a tug and said, "Well, come on! We didn't come all the way across the Channel just to look at it!" and pulled her down the slope to check in with the site supervisor.

The site supervisor was a man named Clarence who was very friendly, very welcoming, and very busy. He was peering over the shoulder of another worker in the main tent when they found him, examining what Rose could only assume was a map of the dig. He stared blankly at them for a moment after they introduced themselves, then snapped several times in succession and exclaimed, "Oh! From Anabel Lordon's crew! Of course!" in gently accented English. He came over to shake their hands enthusiastically. "You caught me first try, which is very impressive and not likely to happen very often, I'm afraid," he continued as he bustled all over the tent, searching for various files and items that he handed them once located. "I jump around this place an awful lot; we're incredibly busy, but any friend of Anabel's is a friend of mine, so the very warmest welcome to you both!"

"He's as ridiculously enthusiastic as you are," Shanti muttered to Rose in an undertone. "I didn't think that was possible." Rose elbowed her.

"We're absolutely thrilled to be here, sir," Rose told him, and Clarence laughed.

"Oh, just Clarence, please! Save the sirs for the important people! Anyway, as Anabel has probably briefed you, we discovered this site about four months ago, remains of an ancient tribal village we're hoping is going to provide a link between English and French ancestry. Anabel's requested the right to inventory and catalogue, as well as studying any written records we come across. We've got a research tent set up on the other side of the compound for that purpose. It'll be the two of you and Bridgette and Phil, your French counterparts. You two speak the language?"

"We do," Rose confirmed.

"Excellent! Now, here are your badges. Would you like to stop by your living accommodations or get straight to work?"

"Straight to work!" Rose answered before Shanti had a chance to reply. She could feel Shanti's glare, but she ignored it. "And if I can ask, who does the team consist of?"

"We've got all sorts - four different Ministry departments represented - and that's the British Ministry. Most of those people have French counterparts. But there's your department, and we have archeologist specialists and international liaisons, and an Auror or two for security. And then there are a couple I can't really speak to. Security, red tape, you understand, I'm sure." Rose was highly intrigued, but didn't question further, as Clarence's name was called out from across the tent. He grimaced. "Hate to introduce myself and run, but-"

"It's no problem," Rose assured him. "We can find our way to the research tent." With a slightly distracted smile, Clarence handed them their kits and gave them quick directions to the research tent at the far end of the dig site.

"Welcome to the team!" he said before heading away to deal with the next incoming piece of business.

"So," Rose said as she and Shanti made their way across the dig. "Who do you suppose are the people he can't talk about? That's mysterious, isn't it?"

Shanti shrugged. "If we needed to know, we'd be told."

"I'm aware of _that_ ," Rose said with a roll of her eyes. "But aren't you the least bit curious? You're a researcher! Curiosity is supposed to be one of your things!"

But before Shanti could answer, near disaster struck. The path Clarence had sent them on went up above the dig, but the earth was dry and crumbly, and Rose had inherited her father's lankiness rather than her mother's lithe grace, and as she and Shanti made their way along, the ground beneath Rose suddenly gave way. For one terrifying moment, Rose felt herself lose her balance, and she could see herself toppling over the edge.

"Rose!" Shanti yelled, reaching for her friend, but there was no way Shanti could reach her before she tumbled down twenty feet.

But then - salvation. A strong arm reached out and grabbed Rose's, and she found herself being pulled upright. "Careful there, Miss Weasley," her rescuer said, and she stared up at him, breathless not just from the near tumble. "Don't want to fall in."

"Scorpius Malfoy!" she gasped as he set her back on solid ground, for he was, indeed, the one who had saved her from certain injury. "What are you doing here?"

"Keeping young researchers from falling into holes, apparently."

The comment startled a laugh out of Rose, though she could feel the force of Shanti's eyeroll from beside her, but with a smoothness that came from years of practice, Rose silenced Shanti with a swift elbow to the side.

"Seriously," she said then. "What are you doing here?"

"I was assigned to the dig, same as you," he said with a smile.

"By what department?"

"My department," was his infuriating reply. Rose rolled her eyes.

"You want to shed any light on which department that is?" He just smiled.

"I'm afraid I really can't speak to that. But it's a long dig. Maybe you'll uncover that along with your artifacts."

"So until then, you'll just continue to be a perpetual enigma?"

"Why? Does my being a perpetual enigma bother you?"

"Not at all," she said with a quirked eyebrow. "But you should keep in mind that my job involves the solving of perpetual enigmas, so you're really only increasing the interest."

He leaned in close. "Maybe that was the whole idea," he said in a low voice.

"Okay," said Shanti, finally breaking in. "Nice to see you again, Scorpius, but Rose and I really have to get going. See you around." And she steered Rose rather forcefully away. Scorpius's chuckle followed them as they continued heading toward the research tent.

"What was that all about?" Rose asked. Shanti just gave her a look.

"Really?" she asked. "Shall we talk about the unprecedented amount of flirting you were doing back there?" Rose colored.

"I wasn't _flirting_ ," she tried to argue, but Shanti stopped her with another look. Rose sighed. "Okay, fine," she said. "I was flirting. But I'm twenty-four, single, and work primarily with females. Are you really going to begrudge me the opportunity to flirt when it comes along?"

"Just don't let your dad find out you're flirting with a Malfoy," Shanti said as a warning, and Rose had to laugh.

"Shanti, don't let my dad find out I've been flirting _period_ ," she corrected. "He thinks I'm still twelve and don't know about such things."

They reached the research tent, where they found Bridgette and Phil taking inventory. After quick introductions, Rose and Shanti sat down and went to work. Inventory was a straightforward job that didn't require a lot of brain power, and Rose found her mind wandering constantly toward the unsolved mystery that was Scorpius Malfoy.

"What do you remember about him?" Rose finally asked Shanti after about an hour of work.

"Remember about who?" Shanti asked, puzzled, and clearly unbothered by the mystery of Scorpius. "You mean Scorpius? What do I remember about Scorpius?"

"Yes," Rose said with some exasperation. "I mean, we went to school with him for seven years, you must have some memory of him. Some story."

Shanti considered. "Not really," she finally said. "I mean, he was in Slytherin, we were in Gryffindor, so-"

"But we were in the same year!" Rose exclaimed. "This is my point, Shanti! I was Head Girl; I knew _everyone_ , and yet, I _still_ can't remember anything about him! Not specifically."

Shanti frowned. "What do you mean you knew everyone?" she asked, and Rose sighed because that was really not the point.

"I mean," she said with forced patience, "that when I got named Head Girl, I made sure I could identify every student on sight, their name, their House, and something else about them, so that I'd start any potential encounter on the right foot." Shanti stared at her.

"There's something really kinda freakish about you, you know that?" Shanti asked, and Rose shoved her.

"The _point_ is, I did that for _every student_ , but Scorpius is a blank. I have periodically wracked my mind about this since the scroll incident, and I've got nothing. No memories, no stories, no facts. I didn't even _recognize_ him."

"Why are you so fixated on this?" Shanti asked then.

"I don't like puzzles I can't solve," Rose said, trying to hide the slight discomfort that came with that question. "So do you think you could send out some feelers for me?"

"Me? Why me?" Shanti asked.

"Because you're the one who established the information network that spanned all four houses," Rose reminded her, and Shanti gave a little smile of pride.

"That I did," she said. "Fine. I'll see what I can dig up." Rose was momentarily taken aback.

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah," Shanti said. "Because he's got this smile like he's enjoying a great joke the rest of us don't get, and it bugs me."

And so, Shanti sent out letters. And while she and Rose waited for responses, they threw themselves into the dig.

For the first time in her career, Rose was working on a massive dig site with at least thirty other people, all of whom were just as excited and dedicated and thrilled by the work they were doing as she was. During official dig hours, Rose catalogued and inventoried all the artifacts coming out of the dig, and she helped Clarence keep track of what was going to which department in which Ministry. She read scrolls in ancient French and offered one possible translation to the team of translators working to uncover the information. She even got some hands on experience in artifact extraction. She was learning so much, and having the best time of her life doing it.

And off official hours, at lunch and dinner, in the dorms in the evenings, Rose did her unofficial work for Anabel - talking to her dig mates, hearing and recording their stories about their work, their memories of the Last Great War, anything they had to tell that they remembered or that family members remembered. Because as Anabel was always stressing (and which Rose agreed with entirely), it wasn't just the ancient past that needed to be preserved.

Rose made contacts and friends aplenty on that trip, but it couldn't be denied that she spent just a little more time trying to get information out of Scorpius Malfoy.

It was an uphill battle. As skilled as Rose was at getting people to talk about themselves and their lives, Scorpius was equally skilled, and many a conversation ended with her realizing that she'd spent the whole lunch break reliving her memories at school instead of getting Scorpius to relive his. He was a master of deflection, of turning attention away from himself, and Rose began to understand why she remembered so little about him from school.

But she wasn't about to give up. If anything, each failed attempt to find out more about him just made him all the more infuriatingly fascinating. She asked Anabel one day if she knew which department he was from, but she didn't know anymore than Rose did.

"But he said that if anything happened with the scroll after he left, that you'd know how to contact him!" Rose insisted.

"Mercy, Rose," Anabel said with a laugh. "I didn't call him directly! I sent a general Code 12 to the higher ups, and he's who they sent down. If something had gone wrong, I'd have sent a Code 23 follow-up memo, but that's like owls. I don't have to know where he is exactly. I have no idea which department he belongs to. I was told not to worry about it."

So Rose, all other avenues having failed her, was forced to sit and wait and hope that one of Shanti's informants would shed more light. Unfortunately, Shanti's efforts revealed little more than Rose's. "No one remembers _anything_?" Rose asked over artifact inventory one morning when Shanti had heard back from everyone she'd contacted.

"Anna Pensworth is convinced he was the anonymous Valentine, but other than that, no. The guy was a non-entity."

"No one is that much of a non-entity," Rose insisted.

"Maybe he is, though," Shanti said thoughtfully. "I mean, maybe this enigmaticness isn't new. Maybe he's always been a man of mystery." Something in her words made Rose pause, quill hovering above parchment. Shanti glanced at her. "Rose?"

"Say that again," Rose requested.

"Say what? That he's a man of mystery?"

"Of mystery," Rose repeated in a mutter. "Shanti – do you remember what he said that first day? When I asked him what department he worked for?"

"Um," Shanti said, frowning and trying to remember. "He said he couldn't talk about it, didn't he?"

"No," Rose said slowly. "No, it was far more awkwardly worded. He said he couldn't _speak_ of it. And Clarence said the same thing. And the higher ups told Anabel not to ask. He couldn't _speak_ of it, and you know why? Because he _is_ enjoying a great joke the rest of us don't get. Excuse me." And she stood and strode from the research tent in search of one Scorpius Malfoy.

She found him in the mess tent. "You're an Unspeakable," she said without preamble, sliding in across from him. He glanced up, his fork pausing halfway to his mouth.

"I'm sorry?" he asked.

"You're an Unspeakable," she repeated. "You work for the Department of Mysteries. Admit it." He cleared his throat and returned his fork to his tray.

"I can neither confirm nor deny—"

"Yeah, that means yes," Rose interrupted. Scorpius peered at her for a moment. "Oh, come on," she said. "Whenever anyone says that, it always means yes. I know I'm right."

Scorpius held her gaze shrewdly, and for a moment, she was convinced he'd remain stubbornly silent, but then he gave a small smile and nodded. Rose grinned, flushed with victory.

"So," she said, leaning in conspiratorially. "What room do you work in?" Scorpius laughed and shook his head.

"There's that Ravenclaw side of you coming out," he said. "Asking questions you know I'm not going to answer."

"Aha!" she said, pointing a finger. "I wasn't a Ravenclaw, I was a Gryffindor. So I'm not the only one who misremembers things."

"I never said you were a Ravenclaw," Scorpius said with a half smile then. "I said your Ravenclaw _side_ was coming out. I remember full well that you were in Gryffindor. I also remember that you were a Hatstall. The Sorting Hat took nearly seven minutes to place you, and I'd bet it came down to the same decision it faced with your mother – Gryffindor or Ravenclaw." He sipped his coffee while she stared at him.

"You always have to be right, don't you?" she asked with mock irritation. He shrugged.

"I don't have to be," he corrected. "I just usually am." Rose gave an incredulous breath of a laugh.

"You are the most ridiculously self-assured person I have ever met," she informed him, and he grinned.

"Yes," he said simply.

"But!" she said, determined to regain the high ground, "I solved your mystery, so what do you have to say to that?"

"Truthfully?" he asked, standing to clear his tray from the table. "Took you long enough." And he walked away, leaving Rose staring after him, her mouth open in disbelief.

With that secret dispelled, Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy quickly built an undeniable rapport. She continued to make a game out of trying to get him to talk about himself, his childhood, his time at school, and he continued to deflect every question.Their conversations devolved into pure flirting more than Rose wanted to admit, but enough that she really did start to worry about whether or not Shanti was going to sprain something with her near-constant eye-rolling. But Rose couldn't help it. There was a connection there, and it would only be around until the end of the dig, so why not take full advantage while she could?

All too soon, the dig closed down, and two weeks after positively identifying Scorpius as an Unspeakable, Rose and Shanti and Bridgette and Phil packed up the last of the artifacts destined for the Magical Anthropology Department. Then Rose and Shanti said their goodbyes to their new friends, and stood in the Portkey line for London next to none other than Scorpius.

"You never did tell me," Rose said, "what interest the Department of Mysteries had in this dig."

"Nope," Scorpius agreed cheerfully, hands in his pockets. "I never did."

Rose shook her head with a smile and Shanti rolled her eyes, and Rose said, "You know, I don't think you Unspeakables are actually as mysterious as you pretend to be. I think you just want everyone to _think_ you are."

"And what possible purpose could that serve?" he asked her then, but there was a hint of teasing under the question.

"Perception is power," she said simply. "And by being perpetual mysteries, the purported driving force behind all magical discoveries, you garner that power in spades. Much more so than you ever would if the truth came out – that you're ordinary people doing slightly unordinary work behind a shroud of secrecy."

Scorpius laughed out loud at that. "You're not far wrong, Rose Weasley," he admitted then, and Rose felt a sense of accomplishment. "But keep our secret, would you? As a favor to me?" and he flashed a smile at her then that she couldn't help but return.

"But that puts you in my debt, doesn't it?" she asked with an arched eyebrow. "Are you sure you're comfortable with that?"

"Well," he said, stretching out the word. "I have saved your life twice now, let's remember to take that into account. But, if I had to be in someone's debt, I would be in yours any day."

Beside her, Shanti gagged. "Could you two stand a little further away?" she asked. "You're getting your flirt all over me."

Rose gave her a shove, and then they were at the head of the line. "Well, then," Scorpius said, turning to her. "This is goodbye, I think."

"You mean _au revoir_ , yes? I mean, we are still in France." Scorpius raised an eyebrow.

"Til we meet again?" he asked. "You want to make that promise, Rose Weasley?" For some unknown reason, Rose felt herself blush.

"I'm not done with you," she said. "After all, I have yet to prove that you're just an ordinary man." He smiled one last time.

"Until we meet again, then," he said, then took the rusty can from the official in charge of the line, and was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

III.

Six months after the trip to France, Shanti waltzed into Rose's office in a stunning new sari and said, "I have an early Christmas present for you. And, blimey, you look gorgeous."

Rose glanced up from the paperwork she was hurriedly filling in and smiled. "Thanks," she said, one hand smoothing down the deep green fabric of her new dress robes. "You have a present for me?"

"Yes," Shanti said, plucking the parchment from Rose's hand. "It is waiting down at the Christmas party, and Anabel said we could leave all this til Boxing Day, so come on." Smiling, Rose let herself be led from the room.

"Of what nature is this present?" Rose asked as they made their way to the Ministry Atrium, which had been converted into a ballroom for the evening.

"Well," Shanti said, linking her arm with Rose's, "I found someone with stories of Scorpius Malfoy for you." Rose stopped.

"Really?" she asked, her interest piqued. "You've still been looking into that for me?"

"I've been making inquiries on your behalf," Shanti said with a smile and a nod. "I've decided that you're right. No one should be that much of a non-entity. Someone has to know something about him, so I decided to find that someone. And I have. Reyna Silvestri. She was a Slytherin in our year, and she's here at the party and willing to talk."

"Shanti, I could kiss you!" Rose exclaimed. Shanti just grinned. 

The Atrium was alive with activity when they reached it, and Rose was hit with the scope of just how many people worked at the Ministry. "We sure know how to throw a party, don't we?" Rose asked over the music of what sounded like a full orchestra.

"Come on, Reyna's over here." They made their way to a corner of the ballroom where small tables had been set out for those wanting to sit and socialize. From a sizable distance, Rose recognized Reyna, striking in black and silver.

"Rose Weasley," Reyna said in a silky voice as they approached, standing to shake Rose's hand. "Shanti said you were looking for information about Scorpius from school?"

"If you don't mind," Rose said as they all sat around a table.

"May I ask why you're asking?"

"Because Scorpius is being a mystery on purpose," Rose said evenly, "and I don't like it."

Reyna laughed. "Good a reason as any, I suppose. Well, I don't mind sharing what I know, but full disclosure, it isn't that much. I sat behind or beside him in a lot of classes. Prime position to observe."

"And what did you observe?"

Reyna leaned in over the table and spoke in a much lower voice. "That Scorpius Malfoy is a lot smarter than he let people believe."

"Are you sure?" Rose asked, her brow creased. "He was middle of the class at best, decidedly average."

"Because he chose to be," Reyna said with authority. "But trust me, if he'd put his all into it, he'd have passed up even you, Head Girl." Rose tried not to bristle at the suggestion.

"How do you know?" she asked carefully.

"Because Scorpius had a notebook, and in it, I watched him write down every answer to every question that every professor asked. Always the right answer. He never rose his hand, never volunteered any information, but he knew it all. If a professor specifically asked him for a question, he'd answer correctly about half the time, but the rest of the time? He'd give a wrong answer, or say he didn't know. Also, he deliberately answered questions wrong on his tests. I'd watch him, when they were returned, all marked up. Before we ever went over them in class, he was correcting all his answers, comparing them to his book. And I can't prove it, but I think he did all his homework twice – once for real, for him, and once . . . worse, to turn in for the teachers."

Rose stared. "Why would anyone do that?" she was finally able to ask. Reyna shrugged.

"All I can tell you is what I observed. The reasons behind the actions remain a mystery. I watched him perform spells perfectly, and then mess them up once the teacher was watching. I saw him hit the right stages in Potions, then deliberately add a wrong ingredient before turning in his flask. I watched an absolutely brilliant young man present himself as far dumber than he actually was, but I can't offer any insight as to why."

Rose sighed, considering all this. "Then let me ask you this," she said. "What—"

But she was interrupted before the question could be asked by a familiar male voice saying, "Ladies."

She didn't need to turn around or to hear Reyna say, "Scorpius Malfoy, speak of the devil," to know who was behind her.

Rose grimaced and said, "Thanks for that," to Reyna, who just smiled. Then she turned.

"Scorpius," she said cordially with a nod. "Good evening."

"And to you three," he said. "Ladies, I wonder if I might interrupt to steal Miss Weasley away." Rose could practically feel Reyna and Shanti sit up straighter and exchange intrigued looks at that remark.

"For what purpose?" Rose asked, eyes narrowed slightly, trying her best to ignore them.

"A touch of business," Scorpius said evenly, "and a dance." Rose felt herself blushing, and she had a feeling neither Shanti nor Reyna had missed it. She covered as swiftly as she could.

"Well, Mr. Malfoy, I am in the middle of an important conversation at the moment, so I fear I'll have to put you off."

"No, no," Reyna broke in with an evil smile. "That was all, really. Don't refuse a dance on my account."

"Or the supposed . . . _business_ , either," Shanti added with a smirk. Rose kicked her under the table.

"Very well," she said. "If my _friends_ insist." And with a last glare at the pair of them snickering at her expense, Rose took Scorpius's hand with all the dignity she could muster and let him lead her out onto the dance floor.

Scorpius Malfoy, Rose discovered, was a skilled dancer. But she was determined not to let that distract her, just as she was determined not to think about the weight of his hand on her waist or the fact that she probably had family members in the vicinity who might at any moment look over to see her dancing with Scorpius Malfoy.

"So, what was your business?" she asked. "So important that it interrupted another conversation?"

"My apologies for that," Scorpius said with sincerity. "It was unpardonably rude. But in my defense, Miss Dharuna did wave me over."

"She _what_?" Rose exclaimed, twisting in his arms to try and glare at Shanti, but she only managed halfway and settled for glowering in her general direction as Scorpius continued to lead her about the dance floor.

"I'll admit, though, that I was looking for an excuse to ask you to dance," Scorpius said then, chasing all thoughts of killing Shanti from her mind.

"You were?" Rose asked carefully.

"Yes," he said amiably. "Miss Weasley, it has come to my attention that you and Miss Dharuna have been making rather specific inquiries over the past six months." There was no change in his tone; he was as friendly as ever, but the very fact that he'd been made aware somehow of all her inquiries made a telltale heat rise in her cheeks.

"And what exactly have you heard?" she asked, playing it cool.

"That you and Miss Dharuna have been sending out letters to old schoolfellows, asking after my doings there. That you casually ask those you run into if they remember anything specific about me. That sort of thing." He looked her in the eye with a smile. "Care to comment?" he asked, and Rose thought about being embarrassed for one moment, but then she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.

"About what, precisely?"

"About why you didn't simply make these inquiries of me."

"But I did, if you'll recall," Rose countered. "At the dig. Several times. You were always less than forthcoming. I thought I'd have more success taking a different route."

"I see. And I don't suppose you'd tell me what you've learned?" There was a hint of a smirk, as if he'd guessed that she hadn't learned much, so she decided to meet mystery with mystery.

"No," she said. "For the time being, that will be my secret."

"Then, at the very least, may I ask to what these questions tend?"

She had to smile at that, hearing words from her favorite novel inadvertently fall from his lips, and though she knew he wouldn't recognize the text, she couldn't help but answer in kind.

"Merely to the illustration of your character," she quoted, reveling in a for-once private joke, but aware very suddenly how fitting the words still were. "I am trying to make it out."

"And what is your success?" he said then, and Rose stopped short, frowning.

"Okay, that is strange," she told him, and he quirked an eyebrow. "The first time could easily have been coincidence, but for you to continue word-for-word after my reply —"

"What, you quote _Pride and Prejudice_ alone?" he asked, and then Rose truly was taken aback.

"You were quoting _Pride and Prejudice_?" she asked when she could manage words again.

"Why?" he asked with that glint in his eye that she was coming to hate. "Didn't you recognize it?" She glared at him, and he smiled. "Your next line is supposed to be 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.' By the way."

She almost swatted him. "Yes, _thank_ you, I'm aware," she said, exasperated. "Just as I know that _your_ next line is, 'I can readily believe that reports may vary greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either,'" she quoted rapidly, determined to outdo him. "Given that _Pride and Prejudice_ has been my favorite novel since I was seven, of _course_ I recognize it, but you're one of the last people I'd expect to know the novel well enough to quote it back at me."

"What, too feminine a book for me to have read?" he asked with mock concern.

"Too _Muggle_ a book," she corrected.

"Well, fair enough," he said with an air of concession, though for the life of her, Rose couldn't guess what he was conceding. "I do prefer the first draft, before the Ministry got a hold of it and censored it to death, but the Muggle version is good, too."

"Okay, no," Rose said flatly, and now she did actually stop in the middle of the dance floor.

"Rose," Scorpius said glancing around, "the point of a dance floor is to keep moving. If we stop, we're going to get in–"

" _Pride and Prejudice_ is not about wizards."

"Not the version you've read, no," Scorpius said, taking her hand and pulling her back into the dance. Rose allowed this, but did not cease the argument.

"Not _any_ version," she insisted. " _Pride and Prejudice_ is a _Muggle_ classic."

"Yes," Scorpius said patiently. "But before it became a Muggle classic, it was a story about gentlemen from pureblood Wizarding families who fell in love with girls from a half-blood family and had to choose between keeping their bloodlines pure or marrying for love. It was a brilliant piece of social commentary. Austen was a genius."

"Jane Austen wasn't a witch!" Rose insisted. "If she was a witch, we would have claimed her! We claim everyone."

"Again, you're right. She wasn't a witch. She was a Squib," Scorpius said with a smile. "Which means that, in addition to being a brilliant piece of social commentary, _Pride and Prejudice_ was also, if you'll pardon the vernacular, a big 'suck it' to a Ministry who refused to acknowledge her existence. Like I said, genius."

Rose stared at him, trying to determine if he was in earnest. Eventually, she said, "I don't believe you. I think you're making this up."

"I can prove it," he said with a twinkle in his eye, looking, as always, as if he was enjoying himself immensely - at her expense.

"How?" Rose asked with narrowed eyes.

"I can show you the manuscript."

"You have her manuscript?" Rose asked. "Jane Austen's original _Pride and Prejudice_ wizard version manuscript?"

"Well, not me personally, but the Department." Rose lifted an eyebrow.

"And you can show it to me? You're allowed to do that?"

Scorpius hesitated for the slightest moment before saying, "There's a loophole I can exploit." Rose fixed him with a penetrating gaze, still trying to make out the man before her. "Do you want to see it?" he asked.

"Yes," Rose said immediately because of _course_ she wanted to see it. "But if this is some trick, I'm warning you—" He laughed.

"It's not," he promised. "But you have to say, 'Unspeakable Malfoy, I want to see Jane Austen's original manuscript of _Pride and Prejudice_.'"

"Why?" she asked warily.

"Do you want to see it or not?"

"Fine," she said, agreeing to play along. "Unspeakable Malfoy, I want to see Jane Austen's original manuscript of _Pride and Prejudice_."

"Then let's go," he said, and started to lead her off the dance floor.

"What, now?" she asked. He gave her a little shrug, eyes twinkling away.

"Why not?" he asked.

Well, Rose could think of many reasons why not – it was after hours, it didn't technically sound like something that was allowed, it would involve them leaving the Christmas party together when there were at least two people watching them like hawks, there was a very good chance someone related to her might notice – but somehow, despite all those reasons, Rose found herself saying, "All right, then," and following Scorpius from the room.

They stood before the entrance to the Department of Mysteries moments later, Rose's heart beating fast with the anticipation of seeing in person a place she'd only heard of in stories from her parents and aunt and uncle.

"Now, unfortunately, I'm going to have to blindfold you for a little bit," Scorpius said.

"What? Why?" Rose asked. Scorpius grimaced slightly.

"It's part of that loophole I mentioned earlier," he said. "The gallery where the manuscript is stored is public access; anyone can request to see anything in there, and we have to take them. But they have to know what they're looking for, and that it's housed with us, and the gallery is in the middle of rooms that _aren't_ public access."

"All about sharing history with the people, aren't you?" Rose asked sardonically, and Scorpius grimaced.

"Not nearly as much as I would like," he said quietly. "Do you still want to see it?"

Rose narrowed her eyes and glared. "Yes," she said. "But I will remain highly suspicious of you, if you don't mind." Scorpius laughed at that.

"Not at all," he said, and conjured a blindfold.

The journey in the dark was not uncomfortable, but it was a bit nerve-wracking. Luckily Scorpius, as he had been when he'd released her from the cursed parchment, was very good at being reassuring, and Rose found herself trusting him all over again. And finally, he stood behind her and untied the blindfold.

He'd called the room they were in now a gallery, but to Rose's eye, it was much more like a storeroom or a warehouse. Scorpius left her seated at a long research table in the central aisle, and disappeared into the stacks. Rose looked around in shock, marveling at all the things contained in this place that no one seemed to know about.

And then Scorpius reappeared, levitating an old collection of parchment in front of him, which he carefully placed on the table in front of Rose. "That's it?" Rose asked, breathlessly, but she didn't need his confirmation, as written in elegant script on the front page was _First Impressions by Jane Austen_.

"Here," Scorpius said softly, offering a pair of white cotton gloves to her. "I thought you'd prefer to touch rather than simply magic."

"I can handle it?" she asked, taking them. At his nod, she very carefully and delicately turned the pages, reveling in the reality of what she was holding, catching lines and phrases here and there different from what she remembered.

_It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single Wizard in possession of fortune and lineage, must be in want of a pureblood wife._

_"There were some very strong objections to the lady – a Muggle mother, and if that weren't enough, it is rumored that one of the sisters is a Squib!"_

And in one of her favorite scenes, _"I might as well inquire," replied she, "why with so evident a desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason and even against your character? That you loved me in spite of my inferior blood, Muggle mother, and Squib sister? Was this not some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil?"_

And, _"Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your blood? – to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own? To introduce into the immaculate Darcy line, blood that has produced an unMagical child?"_

She read in wonder, and finally, she tore her eyes away from the page. "This is . . . incredible," she said. "I can't believe . . ." She trailed off, pressing the back of a gloved hand to her mouth, holding back tears. She couldn't seem to put it into words. But he seemed to understand regardless.

"Happy Christmas, Rose," he said softly. She shook her head in wonder, her gloved hand tracing the delicate pages with a reverence.

"I don't have anything for you in return," she said. "This . . . I wouldn't even know how to match it."

"Then it's lucky that that's not how gifts work. And besides, you have given me something." Rose looked up at that.

"What?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"Rose," he said, sitting beside her and taking one of her gloved hands in a gesture that made Rose's heart beat a little faster, "the sheer enthusiasm and appreciation that you have for the world around you . . . it's incredible. And it's heartening. I saw it first in France, and it took my breath away. You see all of the world with wonder, and it makes me see the world around me in a different light. That's what you've given me. The opportunity to watch you experience this . . . believe me, that's gift enough."

Rose didn't quite know what to say in the face of this declaration. She knew she was blushing furiously, and she couldn't quite bring herself to meet his eye. She cast her eyes around for something else to focus on, and in the end, pointed randomly at a nearby shelf.

"So what's that?" she asked.

"What's what?" he replied, taking the change in topic in stride.

"This, over here," she said, standing and crossing to the shelf and deciding to ask about an ornate golden spyglass. "I mean, if you bring me down here, you can't expect me not to explore and ask questions."

"No, you're right," he said with a smile. "I would be quite foolish to expect that."

"So?" Rose prompted.

"That," Scorpius said, joining her at the case, "is the Erised spyglass."

"Erised as in Mirror of?" Rose asked.

"They go together, yes," Scorpius said with a nod. "The spyglass allows a person to look in on someone else's desire. If I stood in front of the Mirror, and you looked through this glass, you would see what I saw."

Rose exhaled heavily. "That could be a powerful weapon," she said. Scorpius gave her an unreadable look.

"Or a very significant gift," he countered after a moment. He replaced the spyglass carefully on the shelf, and then Rose was off to ask about another item and another and another until nearly an hour had passed in this way. Then, they returned to the manuscript on the table, and with regret, Rose closed it and handed it to him.

He disappeared into the stacks, and Rose found herself looking around at all the crowded shelves again, and she thought about what Scorpius had said, about how she viewed the world. But she didn't seem to be seeing things with wonder in that moment. Instead, she felt a pang of sadness as she took in all in. She didn't notice Scorpius returning until he put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"Rose?" he asked in some concern. "Are you all right?"

"It's just . . ." She sighed heavily. "All this history, and no one even knows it's here. This gallery is full of the kinds of things I want people to see. But we've shut it away. Made it secret. Like we're ashamed of our own history. But hiding it doesn't make it go away. It just makes us more likely to repeat it. These things . . . they should be on display! There should be a museum for them, a monument to Wizarding history, the good and the bad. Someone needs to start one."

"Maybe it will be you," Scorpius said softly, and Rose was thrown off by his tone. She smiled and tried to shake it off, but she caught his eye instead, and the intensity of his gaze took her breath away for a moment.

"I suppose we ought to get back to the party," she said softly, breaking the gaze and trying to recover.

"Probably, yes," Scorpius agreed.

"Thank you, Scorpius. Truly." He smiled.

"It was my pleasure, Miss Weasley." He replaced her blindfold then, and led her out of the Department of Mysteries and back to the Christmas party and Shanti, who was waiting not-so-patiently for answers. "Until we meet again, then?" he asked as they stood in the doorway to the Atrium. Rose hesitated, then nodded.

"Until we meet again," she confirmed, though with a slight pang of regret at the realization that she had no idea when that might be.


	4. Chapter 4

IV.

The Phoenix's Nest was an expensive high-end restaurant, relatively new, and nearly impossible to get reservations for. And that's where Rose Weasley had been sitting alone, for an hour and a half, on her 26th birthday. Sighing, she sipped her water and tried to force down her growing irritation as she waved the waiter away one more time and scanned the restaurant yet again for her illusive date.

"Rose?"

She turned at the sound of her name, but instead of seeing the man she was supposed to be eating with, Scorpius Malfoy was standing behind her.

"Scorpius," she said, feeling strangely pleased to see him.

"You all alone?" he asked, taking in the table for two, still-folded napkin, and upside-down water glass.

"Yes, I am," Rose said, and a hint of her irritation crept into her voice. "Not supposed to be, mind you, but I am." Scorpius's eyes narrowed as he took in her attire and hairstyle.

"Are you supposed to be on a date?" he asked with a frown, and Rose lifted her glass in an affirmative reply. "And who had the audacity to stand Rose Weasley up?" The way he said it made her breath catch in her throat momentarily, though there was no good reason for it. Luckily, he didn't seem to notice.

"Broderick Townsend, up in Processing," Rose said, trying to be dismissive, but not quite managing it. Scorpius was right, she was realizing – it did take a certain amount of audacity to stand her up on her birthday, after she'd pulled family connection strings to get a reservation at the hottest restaurant in town. Unless — "I just hope nothing has happened to him" she said with a sigh, torn between irritation now and worry.

"Broderick Townsend?" Scorpius asked darkly. "No, sadly, this piggish behavior is not atypical for him. He pulled the same stunt with a friend of mine on Level two. Asked her out, then stood her up because she was too intimidating. By all means, make free with your annoyance."

She gave a rough laugh and covered it with another sip of wine. On the one hand, if he found her too intimidating, he wasn't worth her time. On the other hand, why even ask her out and get her hopes up if she intimidated him? She pushed down the swell of bitterness. She was going to do her best not to let this ruin her birthday.

"His loss," Scorpius said then, sensing something of her mood. She glanced his way and made an impulsive decision.

"Your gain," she responded. "Join me." Scorpius looked surprised at the request, and Rose belatedly realized that he might have been there for a meeting, or even on a date of his own. "Unless you can't," she said in a rush. "If you're here with someone else, of course, don't let me—"

"No," Scorpius interrupted with a laugh. "No, I'm not, you just caught me off guard, is all."

"Will wonders never cease," Rose said with a raised eyebrow. "Have I finally managed to stun the unsurpriseable Scorpius Malfoy?" He ducked his head slightly in amused confession.

"I believe you have," he conceded. "Very well, I will join you. But – what if Townsend shows up?"

"He's an hour and a half late," Rose said bluntly. "If he shows up now, he deserves to see me with someone else. Besides, to be honest, I think an evening with you will be far more pleasurable than anything a man so easily intimidated had in store." Scorpius's eyebrows rose at that, and Rose realized too late how the words had sounded. "Oh, I didn't mean it like that, and you know it," she said with a laugh. "Now, are you joining me or not?"

"How could I possibly refuse such an elegant invitation?" he asked with a smirk and slid into the seat across from her as the waiter headed over to the table.

"So, what brings you here? I had to invoke Uncle Harry to get a table, and after an hour and a half, they were getting ready to kick _me_ out, Harry Potter's niece or no. So I know you didn't just drop by."

"No," Scorpius confirmed. "I was supposed to have a celebratory dinner with my boss for a success I can't talk about, but her wife just went into labor. She told me to go ahead and use the reservation since we had it.

"Well, I'd hate to keep you from a company reservation," Rose said, but Scorpius waved his hand.

"I'll release it to some lucky young couple," he said with a smile. "So, then. It's been, what, nearly a year this time?" he commented once their orders had been placed and he reservation had been relinquished. "Happy birthday, by the way." Rose stared.

"How did you know it was my birthday?" she asked suspiciously.

"You didn't want to tap twenty-six times, remember?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

"That was four years ago."

"I forget nothing."

"Right," Rose said, coloring in embarrassment. "So, what have you been up to?" she asked to change the subject. He gave her a look, and Rose rolled her eyes. "Come on," she said. "I wasn't asking about work, I wasn't asking you to divulge DoM secrets. I was asking about life. Surely you have one of those."

"Outside of work? Not really," he quipped, but Rose had a feeling it wasn't far from the truth. "The most interesting things that have happened in the past year have been directly related to work. Much like your own life, I'd wager. I heard about the Initiative. Congratulations."

Rose flushed with pride. The Lordon-Weasley Initiative was a project she had undertaken just after the start of the year. With Anabel's help, they'd spent months writing grants and starting the planning work on a Museum of Wizard History. "Thanks," she said sincerely, but then added, "but don't think I'm letting you off the hook. I am too used by now to your deflections. We will bring this conversation back to you." Scorpius laughed.

"I have no doubt," he said. "But in the meantime, how is the Initiative going?"

"Well, we got it approved, which was a big step," Rose said, but then frowned. "We're losing funding, though. Money we thought we had in the bag is disappearing. Anabel's worried, but we're moving ahead optimistically anyway. We've got some fundraisers planned that I hope will help. But right now, I'm in the middle of researching space for the thing, and the logistics are a nightmare! The city's already got Diagon Alley, St. Mungo's, and the Ministry to conceal, to say nothing of Gringotts. But I'm determined to make this work." She looked up to see Scorpius smiling softly at her in an intense sort of way, not unlike the look he'd given her last Christmas. She cleared her throat. "Anyway, enough about me and the Initiative. Your turn. And no deflecting."

"Rose," he said with a little laugh, "I'm not lying when I say there are things I really am not allowed to share."

"Okay, then we'll make it a game," Rose said with a twinkle. "You be vaguer than vague about your job, and I'll fill in the blanks. And if I guess right, you have to tell me." Scorpius laughed.

"I don't think I'll be agreeing to the last part of that, but fine. We can play that game."

Rose was taken aback. "Really?" she said, because she hadn't expected him to agree. He nodded.

"Sure. So, let's see. I took a trip to Germany."

"Hmm . . . recovering WWII era artifacts that are decidedly more magical than Muggles believe?"

Scorpius chuckled and shook his head. "Not my department." Rose thought for a moment.

"Okay, then," she said slowly. "My next guess . . . recovering information on Dumbledore's defeat of Grindlewald."

"Not even close," Scorpius said. "Get your mind out of the mid-20th century."

This game took them through most of dinner, and served to provide one of the most entertaining evenings that Rose could remember having in a long time. She found herself wondering why she didn't do this more often, why so much time always seemed to elapse between the times when she and Scorpius saw each other. And she decided the time had come to really get some answers from him.

"Since we're in a truth-sharing mood," she said over dessert, "I have to ask – did you mean what you said last Christmas? That you'd answer personal questions if I asked them of you?"

"Well, I don't think that's actually what I said, but . . ." He gazed at her for a long moment, as if measuring, considering, and Rose felt very exposed. But then he blinked, and the look was gone, and he said, "Ask away. I don't promise to answer, but I do promise not to lie." Rose rolled her eyes.

"That's no kind of promise," she said, bordering on petulant. "How about this one – you have to answer unless it's a direct matter of secrecy for your job."

"And how will you know? I could tell you it's secret just to get out of answering particularly embarrassing questions."

"Except that you already said you wouldn't lie," she pointed out with a smile. "Also, I am choosing to trust you."

Her words brought a strange, intense look to his face, one she couldn't read, but again, it was there for only a moment before he said, "All right. Ask your worst."

"Okay." She thought carefully, then smiled slowly. "Were you the Anonymous Valentine?" He stared at her for a moment, then groaned and buried his face in his hands. Rose's eyes went wide in gleeful surprise. "Oh my God, you were!" she exclaimed.

"No," he said emphatically, pointing. "I want to be absolutely clear. I was not. Except . . ." He sighed. "Sort of. Yes." Rose laughed, elated.

"Spill it, Malfoy!" she demanded. Scorpius sighed again and ran a hand through his hair.

"Okay," he said good-naturedly. "No, I didn't originate the Anonymous Valentine, it was a thing that had been going on for a good five years before we even got to Hogwarts. But fourth year, I had the cursed bad luck to find Bobby Engle in the Owlery sending out all those valentines to the single female population, and he said that since I found him, the mantle passed to me. So, yes, for three years I sent out the damned things, but I did it under duress. It was not my idea."

"So Bobby Engle was the Anonymous Valentine?" Rose asked, genuinely curious now.

"No, it was someone before him. I don't know who."

"But you passed it on when you left?"

Scorpius nodded. "Yes."

"So this is a Dread Pirate Roberts sort of thing."

"Exactly."

"Okay, no." Rose crossed her arms as Scorpius raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, but no," she said again. "Classic Muggle literature, fine. I buy that. But Muggle 80s fantasy cult films? I'm sorry, you have just strained credulity. I refuse to believe it."

"It should be noted that I have no idea what you were referencing," Scorpius confessed. "But you sounded so sure of yourself, I felt confident it was an accurate reference."

Rose relaxed in her seat, but she continued to fix him with a slightly suspicious gaze. "All right, then," she said finally.

"So am I then to take it that you are a scholar of Muggle 80s fantasy cult films?" he questioned with a straight face, but Rose was certain he was poking fun at her.

"Not especially, no," she said with dignity. "But I know _The Princess Bride_ because my mother was Muggleborn and grew up in the 80s. And don't try to bring this conversation back to me, sir."

"I would never," he said with mock solemnity. "There is something I want to know in regards to this Anonymous Valantine business. Only two people officially know I had anything to do with it, and I'd like to know who you heard it from, because if those two are blabbing—"

Rose laughed. "It was Anna Pensworth," she said.

"Oh, that's all right then," Scorpius said, waving a dismissive hand. "She's a conspiracy theorist; no one takes her seriously."

"Why do you care if people find out?" Rose asked then.

"I don't want people painting a picture of me based on a single piece of information taken out of context," he said then. "They do that enough as it is."

He'd said it casually, matter-of-factly, but Rose could tell there was something driving the words. "Is it true you turned down Prefect?" she asked softly then.

He hesitated for only a moment before saying, "No," but Rose caught it.

"That's a half-truth," she said, no longer teasing or joking or cajoling, just pointing it out as a reminder that he'd promised to be honest. He sighed and looked down at his empty plate.

"I owled the Headmaster and my Head of House at the end of fourth year and asked them not to include my name in consideration for Prefect. I didn't turn it down because I didn't give them the chance to offer it to me."

"Do you think they would have?"

"I don't know," Scorpius said with a slight frown. "Maybe not, but I think Professor Eldritch might have tried."

"Because he knew your secret?" Rose asked, and Scorpius fixed her with a level gaze.

"What secret is that?" he asked, but he knew what she meant, and he knew she knew. He was just forcing her to say it.

"That you purposefully got bad grades. That you consistently dumbed yourself down."

"First of all," he said, "I got mediocre grades, not bad ones. And I dumbed my work down, but never myself."

"So it's true then?" Even though she had asked, even though she'd heard the rumor, there was a part of her that still hadn't really believed that he had done such a thing, that anyone would really do such a thing, and to hear him confirm it . . . it still stunned her, even though she had known the answer.

"Yes," he said simply.

"Why?"

He smiled softly, inwardly, and then said, "I didn't want the attention. The truth is . . . well, the truth is I can't say this without sounding arrogant, so I'm just going to say it, and trust you to understand that it isn't said with arrogance, but . . . I'm brilliant, Rose." He said it almost apologetically, like he wasn't proud of it, like it was embarrassing, and Rose didn't, couldn't, understand that. "I've been brilliant my whole life. I remember things after seeing or reading or doing them once, I make connections with lightning speed. I am brilliant, and if I'd ever given my all at school, I would have been top of the class without even trying, and noticeably so. I want to say you'd have given me a run for my money, to be polite, but the truth is . . . not even you, Rose. There's no way I would have escaped notice, and the notice wouldn't have been positive. And I didn't want it. So, yes, I got questions wrong on tests. I prepared mediocre homework for the teachers. I did twice the work, once for myself, and once for them. And yes, Professor Eldritch caught me. I turned in the wrong essay once. Careless mistake, and she never let me forget it. But I never asked to be a Malfoy and ten times smarter than everyone else, and I wasn't going to let it define me."

"I guess," Rose said slowly, "that I can understand that." Scorpius smiled, and it seemed genuine.

"I'm glad," he said, and that seemed genuine, too. "This mindset . . . it's why I pursued the DoM. I figured out a long time ago I wanted to be an Unspeakable. Because they, more than anyone else in the world, really, understand that a person's aptitude has nothing to do with blood or family name. It's the one place I could apply and be confident that, accepted or rejected, it would be entirely on my own merit that I'd have been judged. Not my name, not my family, me. What _I'm_ capable of. And the people who work with me know it, too. Regardless of what they think of me as a person, they know that if I'm there, I've earned it, just as they have, and they know I'll do my job. That's really the best scenario I could have hoped for."

There was a long silence as Rose searched for something appropriate to say to that. But all she came up with in the end was, "I really don't know you at all, do I?"

And she was filled with a deep and sudden sadness when he replied, "No. You don't." The sadness was only slightly lessened when he added, "But no one does, really, and you know me better than most."

He wished her a happy birthday once more and he thanked her for dinner even though he'd paid, and she watched him walk away, wondering how long it would be this time before she'd seen him again, and how it was possible that on this night when she'd learned so much about him, he walked away more of a mystery unsolved than ever.


	5. Chapter 5

V.

Rose never got angry where people could see. She'd always had an awful temper, and there had been some unfortunate incidents in the past, but over the years, she'd learned to control it, and at 27, she was well able, when she got mad, to suppress her anger and keep it in check and wait until she was completely alone to let it all out.

And so, at 27, it was rare that anyone caught even the slightest hint of Rose Weasley's temper. Rare, but unfortunately not non-existent. And it was just her luck that when she punched the wall of a Ministry corridor in a spectacular display of rage, it was in front of none other than Scorpius Malfoy.

"Rose!" he exclaimed with no small amount of concern, hurrying over. "Are you all right?"

Now far more embarrassed than angry, especially as he took her now-bruised and bloody hand in his and began healing it, she choked out, "I'm fine," utterly mortified, pulling away from him, wanting to disappear on the spot. "Really. And I'm sorry you saw that, that was completely inappropriate." She knew she was babbling, but the thought and remembrance of losing her cool in front of Scorpius, of all people, filled her with shame, and talking was her only way of staving that off.

"Rose," Scorpius interrupted, gently but firmly, "Everyone gets mad and loses their temper sometimes. I'm not going to hold that against you. I'm more concerned with what led you to punch a wall than the fact that you did."

He took her hand again, to continue his ministrations, and Rose could feel the anger and hurt and overwhelming sense of unfairness that had led her to the point rising up in her again.

"I —" she started, and, infuriatingly, she felt tears pricking the corners of her eyes. "I just got cut from the Iceland trip," she said as calmly as she could. She felt him pause and glance at her. "The big one," she went on. "The one I've been helping plan for months. The one we're hoping is going to lead us to the first magical link, the discovery I have wanted to be a part of for years. I just got cut."

"How did that happen?" he asked, his voice and face unreadable.

"People are losing interest in our department," Rose said, forcing herself to say it all. "With the DoM and the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office and others that have been around far longer, they see us as redundant. We lost our grant for the Initiative last year and had to abandon the project, and the rest of our programming has been slowly following. Our funding for the trip just took a huge blow. They either had to shorten the trip from three weeks to two, or cut the team from seven to six. And I completely agree with the choice to cut the team down," she stressed.

"But you just wish the outcome had been different," Scorpius finished for her.

"Something like that," Rose said quietly, subdued somehow how that she'd revealed this to him, and had been reassured that he understood.

"So how'd you draw the short straw?" he asked, and Rose had to laugh, though it came out halfway between a laugh and a sob.

"By literally drawing the short straw," she said, and he winced in sympathy and apology. "Sonya and Pieter have to go," she explained. "They know the language and the terrain. And this is Anabel and George's pet project. So that left me and Shanti and Katrin vying for the last two spots. And we've all put in the same amount of work, and we all have the same seniority, so this was the fairest way, but . . ." She trailed off, feeling just miserable now.

"It still sucks?" Scorpius supplied helpfully, and to hear him speak so informally won a more genuine smile out of her.

"Yeah," she agreed. "It's just . . . I don't know. I can't say I wanted it more than they did because you can't prove something like that, and I wouldn't want to. They're my friends, and I want to be happy for them. It's just so unfair, and it's no one's fault, there's no one to be mad at, and I know that, but it doesn't make me less mad. It just makes me feel guilty over still being mad. And . . . yeah. It sucks. It really sucks."

At some point during the speech, Scorpius had led her to a low stone bench, and she sat there now, staring at her hands, feeling despondent and pathetic and fell of self-pity that she knew was beneath her.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, cutting through the whirlwind in her mind. She waved her hand in a half-hearted gesture of dismissal.

"It's not like you cut our funding," she said bitterly.

"No," he replied, still in that calm, quiet voice. "But you're my friend, and I can still be sorry for what you're going through."

She felt another wave of guilt at that, combined with a twinge of pleasure over the fact that he'd called her his friend. "Thank you," she said to her hands.

"And . . . if it makes you feel any better . . . they're not going to find it." Rose's head snapped up.

"What?" she asked.

"The link," he clarified. "They're not going to find it in Iceland."

"How do you know that?" she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking, but she could feel her anger building again in the pit of her stomach. Scorpius, uncharacteristically, didn't seem to notice.

"Because we've looked for it in Iceland," he said, "and it's not there."

"You've looked for it," she repeated. "You've been where we're planning to go, looking for what we're trying to find, and you know it's not there, yet you've let us spend fifteen months and thousands of Galleons planning an expedition we don't know is pointless." Now Scorpius realized his mistake. "Why on _Earth_ would you think that would make me feel better?" Rose demanded, her anger back in full force and now directed at him.

"Rose, I'm sorry," he tried to say, but she barely let him get the words out.

"You know what? Maybe they're right. Maybe we _are_ redundant. Because every secret we want to find, the DoM has already located, catalogued, and _kept_ secret. Because the Wizarding World _loves_ keeping secrets. No one cares about history. No one cares about heritage. No one but me. Me and a team of ten other people, against the whole of Wizarding society. It's no wonder we can't get anyone to take us seriously – the other departments of our own _Ministry_ don't take us seriously! So yeah, Scorpius, I feel loads better. Thanks."

And she stood up forcefully and stormed away down the darkened corridor.

"Rose!" she heard him call after her, but she didn't stop. "Rose, come on!"

He caught up to her easily and blocked her path, but he didn't touch her, and he didn't block the corridor entirely, and she could get away if she wanted, and she knew he'd let her. That, more than anything, made her stop and force herself to calm down and listen to him.

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "You're right. That was the wrong thing to tell you."

She took a deep breath. "No, _I'm_ sorry," she said in a calmer voice. "I know you have to keep secrets, I know there's probably security reasons why you can't trust me with every piece of information you know, and I understand that you don't think that way. I shouldn't have snapped. I just . . . I have to go to work tomorrow and pretend I don't know what you just told me, that everything we've invested in this could have been reallocated to keep other projects deemed less important from dying, but that's not possible now because no one even thought of telling us. Honestly, I'd almost rather there were some sabotage, Scorpius, someone trying to kill our program, rather than the truth -- that we don't even warrant an afterthought half the time. I don't want what I'm doing, what Anabel and Shanti and my whole team is doing, to be pointless. And I don't want the DoM and the Ministry to just be humoring us, if they think of us at all."

Her energy spent, she sank onto another low stone bench and stared at the floor, while Scorpius stood awkwardly in front of her, uncertain of what to say for maybe the first time in their acquaintance. "We're not just humoring you," he said after a long pause. "There is plenty for your team to find, plenty of important history, cultural information that the DoM barely scratched the surface on because if it's not big picture, we don't tend to care. But the trip to Iceland is far from pointless, I promise you. The link isn't there, but lots of history is. And now I've made you feel better about the secrecy but negated making you feel better about missing the trip, so I'm just going to shut up before I put my foot any further into my mouth."

Rose laughed a little at that, and somehow, she did actually feel a little better. "No, I appreciate your honesty, at least," she said, and he made a face and rubbed the back of his neck.

"I don't know why. I mean, my honestly gave you an existential crisis."

"Not really," she said with a sigh. "I'm just tired and over-reacting. It's been a long day."

"Will you be all right, though?" Scorpius asked with genuine concern, sitting beside her.

"Yeah," Rose said with an attempt at a smile. "Just, I wanted this trip more than anything. It's been my deepest desire for 15 months, and having it taken away . . ." She knew she sounded pathetic and whiny and very young, but in that moment, she didn't care. She felt as though, if she was alone, she'd have been crying, but she wasn't about to cry in front of him. "I'll get over it, though, so don't worry about me."

They sat in silence for a few more moments, then suddenly, Scorpius stood. "Come with me," he said, holding his hand out to her. Rose stared at it.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because there's something I want you to see," he said, and because she trusted him, she put her hand in his and let him lead her through the darkened and empty Ministry.

She wasn't entirely surprised when they stopped outside the entrance to the Department of Mysteries. She closed her eyes expectantly. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"You have to blindfold me, don't you?" she asked, peeking one eye open.

"No," he said, taking her by surprise. "Not this time. It's okay." She looked at him and smiled softly.

"I'll keep my eyes closed," she said gently. "I'm not getting you in trouble." For a moment, he looked almost disappointed, but in the next, she was certain she'd imagined it.

She closed her eyes, and he took her hand, and a long while later, through a path of corridors she almost remembered, he positioned her carefully, stood behind her, and said, "You can open your eyes now," in her ear. The feeling of his voice in her ear sent shivers down her spine, though she elected not to think about why.

When she opened her eyes, she was in the same gallery he'd brought her to two years before, standing in front of a large, ornate mirror that she recognized immediately from her dad and uncle's stories, to say nothing of the writing engraved around the top. Her eyebrows rose.

"The Mirror of Erised?" she asked, staring at their reflection, pale in the gallery's soft light.

"You said the Iceland trip was what you wanted more than anything else in the world," he said softly, still in her ear, still sending shivers down her spine. "I want to prove to you that's not true. I want to give you the chance to look in the mirror."

"Why?" she asked, and he hesitated for a long time before he answered.

"Because your happiness, Rose Weasley, shouldn't be so dependent on something so fleeting," he said softly.

"And if it is?" she asked then. "If you're wrong?"

"If you see Iceland in that Mirror," he said with confidence, "then I will personally fund your part of the expedition."

Rose turned to stare at him. "I can't let you do that," she said in all seriousness. "The trip is incredibly expensive; there's no way you can afford it."

"You're right, I can't afford it in the slightest," he said with a bit of a smile. "I'm not a gambling man, Rose. I don't make deals that aren't sure things. This is how confident I am that you are going to see something much bigger in that Mirror than a three-week trip to Iceland." She smiled at him, suddenly shy for reasons she couldn't place or understand.

"And how do you know I won't lie and say I see Iceland just to get you to pay for my trip?" she asked, trying to banter, to feel more like herself again. He gave her the old smile.

"I'm trusting you," he said, and that didn't help her feel any more like herself. "Now," he said, placing his hands on her shoulders and turning her back to their reflections. "Look in the Mirror, and see for yourself."

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, steeling herself. But when she opened her eyes to look, the image in the Mirror hadn't changed. She stood there, with Scorpius slightly behind her. She waited a moment or two for him to move away from the Mirror's line of sight, but when those moments passed and he was still right behind her, she let out a breath of a laugh and said, turning toward him, "Scorpius, if you want this to work, you're going to have to m—"

He wasn't there. The space behind her was empty. Without her realizing it, Scorpius had stepped away and was now nowhere in sight. Rose whipped back to the Mirror, heart pounding in shock, but the view still hadn't changed. There she stood, with Scorpius behind her, and as she watched, the Mirror-Scorpius stepped beside her, and took her hand, and looked down at her with a gaze of such intensity that it made the real Rose go weak at the knees, her breath catching in her throat.

 _It's not possible,_ she thought faintly. _It can't be._

"Rose?"

His voice startled her, and she whirled. "Sorry," he said gently. "Didn't mean to startle you." In his hand, he held a spyglass, and the sight of it filled her with panic.

"Did you see?" she asked in a voice shriller than her usually was. He held out his hands immediately.

"Of course not," he said. "I would never. Not without permission."

Swallowing hard, she nodded, turning her gaze back to the Mirror, but it had gone back to being no more than an ordinary mirror, showing the reflection of just what was in front of it – or so she assumed, but she could no longer be quite sure.

"It can be a little overwhelming," he said sympathetically, coming to stand behind her, but it was too much like the image she'd seen, and she found herself having to swallow hard again.

"Yeah," she said faintly. "Not what I was expecting."

"Not Iceland, then?" he asked with a smile, and she tried to return it.

"No," she said. "Um, why do you have the spyglass?" she asked, trying to direct her attention anywhere else.

"Because," he said, now sounding as shy and hesitant as she'd felt moments before, "I want to share my view with you."

She stared at him. "Why?" she asked when she could speak again past her shock. The ghost of a smile graced his face.

"I'm going to answer that question after you look," he said. He offered the glass to her, and she took it, but she didn't raise it or move at all.

"Do you know what you'll see?" she asked, and he shook his head.

"No," he said. "I mean, I have a pretty good idea, but I don't know for sure."

"Seems like a pretty big risk," she said, stalling now, putting off the moment when she had to move away. "For someone who doesn't gamble."

"I told you," he said. "I have a pretty good idea what's going to be there."

There was nothing else for her to say, so she moved away, out of the Mirror's range. She watched him turn to the glass, watched him take in the sight before him, watched him relax and exhale slightly, and look on the sight before him with _Of course,_ written clearly in his eyes.

"I don't have to look," she said. "If you don't want me to."

"I want you to," he said, his eyes never leaving the Mirror. Nervous and uncertain but with no real arguments left, Rose lifted the spyglass to her eye.

And saw herself, reflected in the Mirror. And as she watched, Scorpius came into view, and Rose watched as her own heart's desire played itself out again in Scorpius's place. And she could no longer pretend she hadn't known this was true.

Without thinking about it, without debating, without a single pause, Rose set down the spyglass and went to Scorpius. She stood before him for a heartbeat or two, and he looked down at her with that look of intensity, except now it was real, and Rose did what was the most natural thing in the world for her to do – she kissed him.

He hesitated not even a moment before kissing her back, and she couldn't help but wonder how much of this he'd known, how much he'd already worked out. But then his mouth moved against hers, and she stopped thinking entirely.

For the first time in her life that night, Rose acted impulsively, trusting her instincts and her heart rather than stopping to deliberate the merits of each individual course of action. And she regretted nothing that happened.

Until the next morning.

The morning after Rose glimpsed Scorpius Malfoy's innermost desire in the Mirror of Erised, she woke up in his bed, knowing immediately where she was and how she'd gotten there, and feeling a wave of shame for her so out-of-character behavior the night before. She didn't need the warm weight of the sleeping man beside her as a reminder, nor the sight of her clothes strewn haphazardly across the otherwise Spartan bedroom.

Biting her lip and moving as slowly and smoothly as possible, Rose slipped out of Scorpius's bed and crept across the room, gathering her clothing and putting it on, determined to slip away without waking him and think about how to deal with this new reality later. Her mind was a whirlwind, arguing voices taking sides against and for her actions, and she let both rage as she tiptoed carefully, praying Scorpius wouldn't wake and catch her in the act.

She didn't realize that she was already caught until she turned to collect her shoes and discovered that he was lying in bed, watching her quietly. She froze. "I wasn't sneaking away," was all she could think to say, and damn it, she already sounded defensive.

"I didn't think you were," he said quietly.

"I have work," she said, and it sounded pathetic to her already. "I didn't know when you had to be up, and I didn't want to wake you."

"I know."

"But I wasn't trying to make an escape or anything." Scorpius frowned, and Rose knew she wasn't pulling this off.

"I didn't think that," he said again. "Although, I have to admit, I kind of do now. You want to tell me what's wrong?"

"Nothing," she said, and she wanted to sound dismissive, but she knew before she'd finished the word that she hadn't succeeded.

"Rose," was all he said, but it was enough. She closed her eyes briefly and steeled herself. He'd understand, she tried to tell herself. He'd understand that last night . . . that it hadn't meant anything permanent. That it couldn't. He'd get that. He had to.

"Last night was lovely," she said, because she couldn't bring herself to lie and tell him it had been a mistake, not something that had felt so right. She saw him start to smile, and she couldn't let him think that was all, and so, in a rush, she finished, "But it probably shouldn't happen again." Scorpius's face froze in an unreadable look.

"May I ask why not?" he said after an interminably long pause.

"Because we don't have a future," she said, reaching for her earrings so she didn't have to meet his eye as she said it. "And at our ages, we're really too old to play around."

She believed that. She did. She couldn't have just a "hop into bed" relationship with him, but no other relationship was possible, despite what she had believed last night when she'd kissed him.

"Too old to play around?" he repeated, and she didn't want to identify the emotions in his voice. "What's the line of demarcation for that, exactly? Because we're 27, and last time I checked, we weren't living in Jane Austen's England where being 21 and single meant you were doomed to a life of spinsterhood."

He was angry; she could deal with that. She could do anger; she'd just meet it with her own. "I'm well aware we don't live in Jane Austen's England, thanks," she snapped. "And I don't believe I said anything about believing myself doomed to a life of spinsterhood."

"And yet, we're 'too old to play around.'"

"It's mind-boggling to me that this is what you're focusing on, rather than the point about us having no future." She tried to say it with a dismissive laugh, but she was on the defensive and she knew it.

"Oh, I'm getting to that," he said in a steely voice, finally climbing out of bed and crossing to her, forcing her to stop her frantic movement around his room, which wasn't good. She needed that. She needed a reason to avoid looking him in the eye. He stood right in front of her and removed it, and all it took was her name. She met his eye and hated what she saw there. "You want to tell me why we don't have a future?" he asked, and she laughed.

"Because we don't, Scorpius!" she said. "A Weasley and a Malfoy? How could we?"

She saw his jaw tighten at her words. "I don't care about that," he said, but she cut him off.

"Yes, you do," she said. "Of course you do. You've spent your life avoiding negative attention, but you aren't going to be able to do that if we're together. With my family? With yours? It wouldn't work, and you can argue the point all you like. Just because you see something in the Mirror of Erised, just because you want something with your whole heart, doesn't mean it's a good idea. And it doesn't mean it's going to happen. We don't have a future, Scorpius, and I'm willing to acknowledge that even if you aren't."

She turned to go, an inner war fiercer than any she'd ever known raging inside her. She believed everything she'd just said. And yet, as she walked away, she couldn't help but hope that he wouldn't make it that easy, that he'd call her back, that he'd find exactly the right thing to say, pull some mystery out of his seemingly infinite knowledge that would convince her. Never in her life had she wanted so badly to be proven wrong.

And then, he did call her back, and she turned perhaps too quickly to face him, heart pounding in fretful anticipation.

But in the end, after a long look charged with emotions they weren't acknowledging, he just said, "Fine," and turned away.

It felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. "Fine?" she repeated, and she wanted to argue, wanted to call him out, but she couldn't find the words. So she just shook her head and repeated, bitterly, "Fine." And she left. She stormed out of his flat, and for as long as it took her to reach the stairs, she thought she could actually leave it at that, but on the verge of taking that first step down, she knew she couldn't. She needed the last word, and she didn't have it. So she turned and stormed back into the flat, with a, "You know, one might wonder why you're not trying a little bit harder to keep me from walking out that door if you're so convinced we really have a future together!" she accused.

"And one might also wonder how you can be simultaneously angry with me for letting you walk out that door and for thinking that you shouldn't," he shot back, as if she hadn't just almost left, standing in the same spot in his bedroom as he'd been when she'd stormed out, having made no move whatsoever to follow her. It infuriated her further.

"Do you really believe---"

"Yes, I do!"

"Then why aren't you stopping me?" She didn't know why this was so important, couldn't muddle through the mess in her mind, but she had to know his answer. She had to know why he wasn't fighting harder for something that had been proven last night to be his greatest desire.

Scorpius closed his eyes, and for one moment, he looked so tired, so exhausted, so nearly broken that Rose almost let him off the hook. But, as was so very him, in the next moment, it was gone, his cool facade back up in place, and there was only a touch of weariness in his voice as he said, "Two reasons. One, you do need to leave because if you don't leave now, you _are_ going to be late for work. And two . . ." There was a long pause in which he seemed to debate how best to proceed. "I know you'll be back."

Rose bristled at that. "That's an awful lot of faith to put in someone who just told you—"

"I don't mean today," Scorpius interrupted, "or tomorrow or even any time soon, necessarily. But I know that if you walk out that door and away from me, it won't matter. We will see each other again. We can't not." Rose stared at him, searching for anything, really, to say to that. But before she could come up with anything, Scorpius lost his composure, growled slightly, and ran his hands through his hair saying, "I'm not explaining this well. I wasn't supposed to have to –" He took a deep breath and crossed to Rose, more intense than she had ever seen him.

"Rose," he said, his eyes boring into hers, then he said, "Rose," again, seeming to change tracks without ever having really started. Rose had never seen him like this before, and she wasn't sure what to make of it. "People assume," he said, never losing that intensity, "that if you work in the Department of Mysteries, you're assigned a single room and you stay there for your whole career, but that's not how it works. You have ideas or problems or questions you're trying to answer and figure out, and you go from room to from as the research leads you. I started with Magic, and Magic led me to Written Word, which led me to Thought, then to Fate and Destiny, then to Love, then back to Magic again."

"You can't tell me this," she broke in. "You could lose your job for telling me this."

"I'm not going to lose my job," he said with conviction. "I'm too good. And you need to know this. You need to know that one of the things that I uncovered is that there are souls in the world that are drawn to each other. They can't help it. Their paths will cross, again and again. No matter how many times they part ways, the universe will spin them back into one another, until one of the souls expires or the paths converge. We don't have an explanation, we have no idea how or why it happens, but I know that it does. I have seen it with my own eyes, and you and I, Rose, are two of those souls."

"Are you—" she started, trying to wrap her head around all of this, "Are you saying we're — _soulmates_? That we're – destined to be together or something? Because I gotta tell you, that's —"

"No," he interrupted, clearly frustrated. "It's not romantic, or, it doesn't have to be, it's just — a connection. An inescapable connection. Your uncle and Tom Riddle had one. And so do we. We're – inevitable, Rose. It doesn't mean anything, not on its own, but it's the reality of you and I."

She shook her head and couldn't seem to stop. It was too much, too much to take on top of everything else. Her life was spinning suddenly out of control because this was what happened when she acted without thinking.

"I'm sorry," she said, backing away from him. "This is . . . I can't, Scorpius. I really can't. I'm not going to stand here while you try and convince me that the end of my life is inevitably linked to yours. I barely know you, when all is said and done, and I'm not letting you put that on my shoulders."

"So, what?" he asked. "What are you going to do? Walk out that door and pretend that none of this ever happened? Go back to the way things were before, paths crossing by coincidence, no meaning attached?"

"And why not?" she demanded then. "Isn't that what you've been doing for almost six years now? You've never once sought me out, never once made any sort of effort to find me or track me down. You've let the universe do everything for you, and I'm sorry, but I don't have that luxury! And I can't place my future with someone content to just sit by and let the universe happen. I need to be more important than that, and clearly, I'm not."

His look darkened. "That isn't what I meant, and you know that. You are willfully misunderstanding me."

She didn't know if he'd done it on purpose or not, but the comment relit her temper and her anger at him. "Well, how very Elizabeth Bennet of me," she snapped. "But sharing a single trait doesn't make me her any more than your prideful aloofness makes you Mr. Darcy. And we are not characters in a novel with our ending already written for us. We're not inevitable, we're impossible. You've shut yourself up so long in that Department, surrounded by the _idea_ of people, but I've spent my life with the real thing, and you and I?" She shook her head. "We're never going to work. And I have to go."

She hitched her bag up on her shoulder and headed once more for the door, tears she was ashamed of gathering in her eyes, but she forced them down.

"Rose," he called after her, practically sprinting across the apartment to reach the door at the same time that she did. "I'm not going to continue this argument now because I know you do have to go. But you need to know that I'm not done with you yet." He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she knew his words were meant to be tender or reassuring, but they fell so short of that mark. "I'm betting on this," he continued, "and I will see you again."

It was the wrong thing to say. She shrugged away from his hand, looked up at him with incredulous disbelief, and said with finality, "Goodbye, Scorpius." And she left, shutting the door firmly behind her. She walked away, tears finally falling, wishing he'd stop her, and hating herself for wanting that so badly.


	6. Chapter 6

VI.

Rose started avoiding Shanti. Not entirely, she didn't go out of her way to avoid spending time with her, but she started working through lunch and turning down invitations to go out with a stockpile of good, ready excuses. She kept their interactions to work-related things, and work-related things only.

The Iceland trip had gone off without a hitch, and Scorpius had been right - there was plenty for the team to find and send back, even if the elusive magical link wasn't among it. But Rose started working overtime to try and get through all the cataloguing and research necessary, and eventually Anabel split the shift into two distinct schedules, and Rose and Shanti were on different halves. So it wasn't difficult to avoid her best friend.

And it wasn't that Rose _wanted_ to, necessarily, it was just that she knew the minute she actually talked to Shanti, her secret about Scorpius would come spilling out, and Rose was really trying her best to forget it had ever happened.

She wasn't having much luck. If her attention wandered for even a minute, it went straight to him, and not to the angry words they'd exchanged. Her mind fixated on the night they'd spent together, and how right it had felt, and how upset she was, despite her words that morning, that he hadn't made at least _some_ effort to get in contact with her. He really was content, it seemed, to prove his point by waiting for the universe to supposedly throw them together again, and she wasn't about to give him the satisfaction.

So Shanti wasn't all Rose was avoiding. She kept to a very strict schedule with absolute rigidity - same grocer, same apothecary, same Apparation Point, same track through the Ministry every day. She didn't grab coffee or lunch with anyone, didn't go out to supper, didn't go out after work, none of it. She wasn't about to prove Scorpius right. If she ran into him on one of her daily tasks, it didn't count because she hadn't changed her routine at all. But just to be on the safe side, she spent as little time outside work or her flat as possible, to minimize the chances of randomly encountering Scorpius Malfoy.

Yes, she was aware that her life had become pathetic.

It didn't help that she missed Shanti, a lot, and had almost cracked and spilled everything on more than one occasion. But she held firm to her convictions for a whole month after the Iceland expedition, until Shanti finally took matters into her own hands and cornered Rose after work one night.

"Are you mad at me?" she asked straight off, since Shanti didn't believe in beating around the bush.

Rose was taken aback. "No," was her immediate and genuine response. "No, of course not, Shanti. I've just been busy, is all."

Shanti nodded, her focus on the floor. "Thanks for confirming that you have, in fact, been avoiding me," she said softly, and Rose colored.

"Shanti-" she tried to say, but Shanti cut her off.

"Is it about Iceland?" she asked. "Are you still upset about getting cut? I wouldn't blame you for being upset still, I'd probably be, but at least let me know what I can do to help."

Rose shook her head. "It's not Iceland," she said.

"Then what is it?" Shanti asked, and it was the concern in her voice that broke Rose down. If she'd demanded or been angry, Rose might have kept her silence. But she could do nothing in the face of the knowledge that her best friend was worried about her.

"I slept with Scorpius Malfoy," she said in a rush, and because she refused to look at Shanti as she said it, she missed her friend's reaction.

Shanti was stunned, to say the least. Of all the things she had been fearing, that was not even close to being one of them. "What?" she asked breathlessly. "When?"

"The day I found out about the trip," Rose confessed, glancing up at her friend, bracing for censure. "He found me right after, and I was upset, and-"

"Did he take advantage of you?" Shanti demanded in a much harsher voice. "Because if he took advantage of you, I don't care if he's an Unspeakable, I'll end him."

Rose laughed, and realized with a start that she hadn't done that in quite some time. "No," she assured Shanti. "He didn't take advantage, I wanted it, or at least, I did then. But the next morning, I regretted it, and we got into a huge argument, and he started spouting this nonsense about inevitability and our souls being linked and just crazy things like that, and I left and I haven't seen or heard from him since, despite the fact that he said he wasn't done with me, but I guess that's just par for the course at this point."

Rose was well aware that she was rambling and probably not making any sense, but because Shanti was a good friend, she didn't point any of this out. Instead, she just said, "Why don't we go somewhere so you can tell me everything?"

Rose agreed, so long as the place they went was her flat or Shanti's, and though Shanti raised her eyebrows at that, she didn't ask or argue. Back at Shanti's flat, Rose told her best friend everything, from punching the wall in the corridor to her exit from Scorpius's the next morning. Shanti sat silent through the whole telling, and when Rose was done, she waited anxiously for Shanti's reaction, but Shanti just took a moment, nodded, and said, "Okay."

"Okay?" Rose repeated, a bit surprised. "That's it?"

"Look, I need time to process all this, and you're worked up enough that I don't think you're really going to listen to anything I say, even if I could get it out coherently, so yeah. For now, okay."

On some level, Rose was relieved. Reliving the experience she'd been trying so hard to forget had been bad enough. She was more than happy to continue putting off about thinking about what had happened in any sort of depth.

"Just tell me one thing," Shanti said, interrupting Rose's train of thought. "Is Scorpius as good a shag as I imagine he is?"

Rose colored immediately. "Shanti!" she exclaimed, shocked and embarrassed.

"What?" Shanti questioned, all innocence. "He's fit, and _very_ nice to look at, so I just -"

"I am not answering that question," Rose said, trying to maintain some dignity. Shanti gave her a long and shrewd look.

"Best shag of your life?" she said after a moment, and Rose looked down.

"Shut up," was the only answer she gave.

But the end of the conversation aside, just telling Shanti had helped, and she actually waited three more months before broaching the subject again. When she did finally speak up, Rose's birthday had just passed, another day in the long string with no word from Scorpius, and by this point she was resigned and relieved and angry and worried and it was really starting to affect her life and her work.

And so she wasn't entirely surprised when Shanti plopped down on Rose's desk at the end of one work day, and said nothing more than, "Okay." But this okay was far different from the one of three months prior, because this okay was starting a conversation rather than ending one.

"Okay?" Rose questioned, and Shanti nodded.

"I have been thinking this through for three months now, and I have come to three conclusions."

"This ought to be good," Rose said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. But Shanti was unfazed.

"Though I say so myself, yes I certainly think so. Conclusion number one - Scorpius has a point. He's absolutely horrible at wooing women, but he does have a point."

Rose's jaw dropped in stunned, betrayed surprise. "What?" she sputtered. "About what, his ridiculous inevitability theory?"

"Yeah, it's not so ridiculous when you think about it," Shanti said evenly. "Of the, oh we'll say, thousand students you went to school with over our seven years at Hogwarts, how many would you say you were really close to? As in, spent a substantial amount of time with them, knew them well, sought them out for conversations?"

"Shanti, what does this have to do with anything?"

"Humor me."

Rose sighed and considered. "I don't know, maybe . . . 20-25? Counting my cousins."

"Okay, and how many more would you call close acquaintances? People who you'd have a conversation with, were on decently good terms with, and spoke to on a regular basis, even if you wouldn't call them close friends?"

"Seventy-five or so? Shanti, what's your point?"

"And finally," she continued, ignoring Rose's question, "how many would you call casual acquaintances? People whose names you knew or faces you recognized, but not really anything more?"

"Maybe . . . three hundred, three fifty? Seriously, Shanti, what -"

"So of that . . . 47 percent of the people you went to school with, how many do you encounter on a regular basis now that you've been out of school?" Rose felt her stomach start to sink. "Of even the 25 people you called closed friends, leave out the ones related to you, how many do you keep in contact with?" Rose didn't answer, because she was almost certain she knew where this was going. "And the rest," Shanti continued. "People unconnected with work, how many have you run into more than once or twice? And yet, here's Scorpius. A guy you barely knew in school. You two have one chance meeting, and now? Comparatively speaking, you two run into each other all the time, Rose. And it's not planned, it's not connected to work, it just happens. So yeah. He's got a point."

"And conclusion two?" Rose asked because she really didn't want to spend any more time on Shanti's logical and well-reasoned argument.

"Conclusion two is that you're head over heels in love with the guy, and you really need to admit it." Rose's head snapped up in panic.

"I - I'm not," she started, her mouth dry, and Shanti looked at her with a mixture of sympathy and pity.

"Rose," she said gently.

"I barely know him," Rose whispered, desperate to believe that meant anything, but Shanti called her on it.

"Not a pre-requisite," she said, not unkindly. "Also not true. I think you probably know him better than anyone. Look at everything he's shared with you."

"Knowing him better than anyone doesn't mean I _know_ him, Shanti, he told me that himself-"

"Rose, you're avoiding the point," Shanti said bluntly. "And the point is this - you don't see your one-night stand in the Mirror of Erised." That silenced Rose, and she looked down at her hands. "Rose, avoiding it doesn't make it less true, and ignoring it doesn't make it go away. Just answer this - can you look me in the eye and honestly tell me that you're not in love with him?"

"No, I can't!" Rose said, almost angrily, because Shanti was right, and Rose knew it, and she hated it. She was in love with him, and she'd thought he was in love with her, too, but he'd never said it, despite the plethora of opportunities she"d given him, and he'd let her walk away and hadn't gotten in contact with her for four months, so maybe she was wrong. Maybe the Mirror hadn't meant what she'd thought, but she really couldn't bear the idea of that being true. "And what's conclusion three?" she asked. "That I need to suck it up and just talk to him?"

"No, but that's probably true, too," Shanti said. "Conclusion three is that you need to stop being a hermit and come out with me tonight."

"Shanti," Rose said with a sigh, "I'm really not up for it."

"Which is partly why you have to," Shanti said. "Let me guess - you've been avoiding leaving work or your flat so that you don't risk running into Scorpius and potentially proving his theories right, yeah?" Rose didn't answer, but she didn't need to. "Yeah, that's dumb, Rose. And what's more, you know it's dumb. You can't spend your life hiding in your apartment. You'll go crazy. So come out with me tonight. It's my cousin's birthday. She's a Muggle. She's hosting her party in a Muggle bar in Muggle London. Scorpius Malfoy is not going to be there."

And Shanti was right. A Muggle bar in the middle of Muggle London overrun with guests at a Muggle birthday party was the last place to find Scorpius Malfoy. And so, of course, that was where Rose ran into him for the first time in four months.

He wasn't there right away. Rose had been awkwardly nursing a drink at the bar while Shanti hung out with her cousin on the dance floor for almost half an hour before Scorpius walked in, shaking snow from his hair. He looked exhausted, his face red from the cold outside, but Rose was too busy staring in shock to really notice much more about him.

He walked up to the bar and had just placed a drink order when looked around and saw her.

He froze, his eyes widening as Rose's look hardened into a glare. Abandoning her drink, she marched over to him. "Are you following me?" she demanded, and he shook his head, still staring at her.

"No," he said faintly.

" _Seriously_ ," she hissed. "Did you know I would be here? Did Shanti tell you?"

"Rose, I - am stunned to see you," he said, and he was, she realized. "What are you doing here?"

"Shanti's cousin," Rose said haltingly. "Birthday party." The full magnitude of the situation hit her as her anger faded away. She swallowed hard, looking anywhere but at him, but eventually she had to ask in a small and hopeless voice, "Inevitable?"

He gave her half a smile, all apologetic, and said, "Yeah."

Rose shook her head. "I need to sit down," she said, because it was all too much. Scorpius signaled to the bartender, then led Rose gently to a nearby table. Rose slid into the seat and pressed a hand to her forehead, her head spinning.

"So," Scorpius said after a slight hesitation as the bartender brought their drinks over. "How have you been?"

Rose stared at him, then shook her head. "No," she said in a hard voice. "We're not going to do that. It's been four months, Scorpius, we're not just going to pick up where we left off."

Scorpius nodded, then said, "Okay. Then . . . where would you like to pick up?"

Rose stared at him again, incredulous this time. "How about the part where you say you're not done with me, and then four months pass?" she said angrily.

Scorpius looked down into his drink. "I just finished an undercover assignment," he said. "As a Muggle. I can't tell you why, obviously, but I got the assignment the day we — that's why I haven't been in touch. I couldn't. Rotten timing, I was so angry I couldn't tell you — but we got the information tonight. I was heading home, but it was cold, and I fancied a drink, and this was the nearest place. I get it if you don't believe that, but I swear it's the truth."

"Inevitable," Rose said again and closed her eyes. "I don't know if I can live in a world where things like this happen," she admitted then. "It's just . . . it's too much. I don't want the universe controlling my life."

"Don't think of it as the universe controlling your life. Think of it as the universe . . . trying to tell you something." He said it with just the tiniest hint of a smirk, and something shifted in that moment. The shift threw Rose off balance until she could identify what had happened.

And then it hit her - he was _flirting_ with her. In a way he hadn't, not once, in their last interaction, or the interaction before. He was flirting with her, and that was how all this had started, and she realized in that moment that she missed it. So she returned his smirk with one of her own and said, "Yeah, Mr. Self-Assured? And what exactly do you think the universe is saying?"

"A soul expires or the paths converge," he said cryptically, but Rose knew what he meant. "That's how this ends, Rose."

"God, you really are bad at this," she said, and he lifted an eyebrow in confusion. "Wooing women," she clarified. "You kind of suck at it." She leaned forward over the tabletop and beckoned him closer. "Do you know what you never said when you were talking about souls and inevitability and all those other big, scary ideas?" He frowned, and she almost threw her arms up in exasperation. "You never said anything about loving me," she spelled out for him.

He sat back, a look on his face like that had never really occurred to him. "I guess . . . he said slowly, "I thought it went without saying."

The statement made her heartbeat quicken, and for a moment it was hard to breathe, but she managed to say, "That never goes without saying." He nodded.

"All right, then," he said, leaning across the table so that their faces were only inches apart. He reached between them and took her hand in both of his, and looked at her with that intensity that had stolen her breath and inhibitions four months before. "I'll say it. But have to warn you first: I know how terrifying this is, loving someone so seemingly unknown, so seemingly ill-suited. I know the struggle you're battling with because I went through the same battle. And I know I have to give you the same sort of time that I've had to come to terms with it, but . . ." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "It is becoming much harder to keep waiting," he admitted. "And if I say this, then you have to know that I'm committing to a future with you. And if you say it back, you're committing to one with me. Because if this night ends with you in my bed again, I don't want to be faced with you trying to sneak away tomorrow morning."

Her cheeks flushed with shame, and she looked away. He reached forward gently and touched her chin, lifting her face back to his. "Rose Weasley," he said in a voice barely louder than a whisper, "You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire-"

"I'll hit you," she said, but she couldn't stop the smile, and he laughed.

"Rose," he said, more serious now, "I love you. I have loved you for so long now. Someday I'll tell you just how long. But at this moment, I want to look to the future. The future I get to spend with you. The future I've been worked toward for so long."

She peered at him and shook her head. "You are laying it on _really_ thick."

"That's because Shanti caught sight of us about twenty seconds ago, and I'm trying to see if I can get her to roll her eyes at us from all the way across the room," he confessed.

"Keep on in that vein, and I have no doubt you'll succeed." He smiled.

"You want to get out of here?" he asked, and she nodded. As he gathered his coat, Rose caught Shanti's eye from across the room. Shanti raised her eyebrows and nodded in Scorpius's direction, a question clear in her eyes. Rose shrugged and nodded, and Shanti smiled. Then Scorpius came up behind Rose and reached for her hand. Rose took it, and smiled up at him, lost in the intensity of his gaze. After a self-indulgent moment, she turned back to find Shanti again, who was gagging in Rose's general direction.

"Success," Scorpius said in her ear, and Rose grinned. "Though I meant every word, my dearest, loveliest-"

" _Seriously_ , I will hurt you," she said with a laugh. He grinned down at her.

"Come on," he said, taking her hand, and together, they headed out into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a review.


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